


so can we pretend, sweetly, before the mystery ends

by gayvincreel



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Chroma Conclave Arc, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, It Gets Complicated Before It Gets Better, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Trauma, Vax'ildan: Champion of the Raven Queen and Master of the Mixed Message, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2020-03-26 07:16:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19000972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayvincreel/pseuds/gayvincreel
Summary: Vignettes on what might have happened if Vax had ended up with Gilmore, instead.(Currently E35 to E58. Update due late March.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Vignettes on what might have been if events in E35 and E39 had gone a little differently, Keyleth had loved Vax a little less, and Vax had loved Gilmore a little more. 
> 
> Title is from Sufjan Stevens' "Beloved My John".

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E35 and E39.

_prelude_

_Keyleth is standing by the Sun Tree, red hair spilling over her shoulders. The mid-afternoon sun frames her face in soft golden hues that make her seem so at peace. Vax almost doesn’t approach her, so content to merely witness her beauty, but then he remembers her voice, soft in his ear._

_"We can’t lose you. I can’t lose you._ "

_Who is he if he cannot tell her after that? In another life, he would have approached her differently, in the way she deserves. In another life, he could have asked her out for dinner and learnt of the softness of her lips under the stars. What is seeing her at peace alone when there may be even the slightest chance of them finding peace together? She’s speaking quietly to the tree, one battle-roughened hand resting on the rough bark; he’s entranced by her long, slim fingers, nails bitten down to the cuticle. For what is death if not to realize you should live? It’s been months, since he knew. If he’s not ready now, he never will be._

_He walks over and laces his fingers with hers and, to him, it is the most natural thing in the world. To Keyleth, however, the most natural thing is to yank her hand away like she’s been lightening-struck. It bothers him no more than the light breeze bothers the leaves on the Sun Tree. She is touched by lightning, and fire, and water, and air; she captures moonlight in her hands. Vax is content to merely stand and savour the sight of her, to let the peacefulness of her presence sink into his bones._

_“I was just talking to the tree.” Keyleth seems to relax a little when she realizes that it’s him, just him, but there remains still a tension in the line of her shoulders. “It talked back.”_

_Silence does descend after that, but Vax is pretty sure - not completely sure, but pretty sure - that it isn’t that awkward a silence. It’s the silence of standing by the side of someone you’re in love with, in the hope that they will love you back. Keyleth continues staring back at him, no longer horrified, but unspeaking, unsure._

_Softly, Vax says, “I already said it.”_

_“I’m sorry,” Keyleth says. “I don’t know. I’m really confused.”_

_“All right,” Vax says, and begins to walk off._

_“Wait,” Keyleth says, and so he waits. He watches her wrestle with the words on which so much might hinge while the silence stretches around them and the shadows grow. “I’d be lying if I said, often at night when I go to sleep, your face isn’t the last thing that crosses my mind. But I don’t - you said that when you were near death. We say a lot of things when we’re near death. How do I know that’s what you were truly feeling?”_

_“I wore a mask for a long time, where I grew up,” Vax tells her. “And I'm not going to do that anymore. I'll wait.”_

_Her face creases at that, like he's said a word in a foreign language she's only just started to learn, like she has heard the word but never in this context, never with this sort of promise. “Wait?”_

_“For you.”_

_“Okay. I don’t know what else to say right now,” Keyleth says. “I’m really tired. Really tired. I think there’s also a part of me that feels like I’m just… going through the motions, I guess? Because it feels like it’s what I’m supposed to do? And I don’t want that.”_

_“Don’t do anything. Don’t change anything. I haven’t lied. I’ve told the truth,” Vax says. She’s beautiful in her agitation, sunlight caught in her hair, eyes heavy with worry.  “If you’ll have me, I’m yours, but I did what I felt like I was supposed to do for a long time as well. I don't want that. For you.”_

_The sun seems to have lost most of its warmth. It must bleed out into the air around him, because Keyleth says, “Oh, Vax, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to just - I really shouldn’t have said - ”_

_“You deserve better than that,” Vax says, quiet and sorry, more to the Sun Tree than anyone else. “Truly, you do.”_

_“We both deserve better than that,” Keyleth says, all the agitation in her eyes replaced by confusion, and poorly concealed tenderness. “I think.”_

_“Then that’s all there is to say,” Vax says, and walks away, the peace seeping from him faster than it settled._

chapter 1

Vax would have bet anything.

Vax’ildan Vessar, brother of Vex’ahlia, member of Vox Machina co-owner of Greyskull Keep, and son of the loveliest human woman he will ever know and the biggest dick walking around in pureblood elven form he will ever meet, would have bet anything, He would have bet his life. He would have bet his sister’s life. He would have bet another flick in the balls from Grog before he would believe that a conversation between him and Shaun Gilmore - owner of Gilmore’s Glorious Goods, the finest clothing in the entirety of Emon, and more of Vax’s heart than Vax had ever planned - would be something to postpone or, gods forbid, avoid.

Naturally, he is in a speakeasy with a harp playing in the background and the current frontrunner to his affections drunk out of her lovely mind when that conversation looms on the horizon. Oh, there’s something terribly satisfying about how, no matter the adorations from the rest of the party, he is the one to whom Gilmore rushes first. He’s looking particularly grand in this lighting, sweat on his brow and a gleam in his eye, and it is has been too long. It has been much too long. It’s been, what, just under six weeks? Who can blame him, really: they’ve all seen him flirt with Gilmore. They’ve all actively encouraged him to flirt with Gilmore, and he really is gorgeous. Who can blame Vax for holding him when he’s just so nice to hold? For making every excuse to touch his face, his chest, his skin, when he’s just so nice to touch? Not after so long apart, yet again. Not after he’s been mind-controlled. Not after he’s been almost killed, again, about five times. Especially not when the aforementioned frontrunner for his affections is the one paying for his drinks.

It's only when Gilmore - glorious, gorgeous, generous Gilmore - has summoned a meal worthy of the gods themselves all because Vax asked him if he had any food does Vax realise he might need another drink. And another. And another. And another. And Gilmore is positively glowing in the firelight as he gestures, grandiose, and Vex watches him order drink after drink after drink.

You can’t blame a man when he’s at a crossroads. She should understand that, better than the rest of them. SInce children, they could carve out a third path of their own but there is no third path here. When the frontrunner to his affections makes a bolt for it to the door, there is no third choice to make, not when three hearts are at stake: Vax looks between the one retreating and the one remaining and, cowardly, makes a bolt for it, too.

It’s not pretty. There would have been a time that, if you asked him, Vax would have sworn yet again on his life that Keyleth could never not be beautiful. That was until he first saw her caked in blood and guts and gore and mud and probably harbouring at least a dozen different diseases in all the shit that was smeared across her skin and in her hair. Yet Vax still wanted her. That’s part of love, he thinks. Love is seeing someone being stubborn and obstinate and righteous and still wanting. Love is seeing someone literally caked in shite and still wanting. Love is, apparently, holding back someone’s hair as they puke up their last three meals into a gutter and still wanting, still wanting, still wanting.

He doesn’t hold her hair back, in the end. Percy, who will one day start playing the role of older brother with his actual little sister, ends up doing the honour. But the damage is done, or not done, and Gilmore emerges into the night mid-vomit, smile never wavering.

“Well, I’d say it’s been a pleasure, but it’s always been a pleasure,” Gilmore announces to the melody of her retching. “Vax’ildan.”

He draws out his name, vaguely sing-song and unmistakably flirtatious. It’d be rude to not look up at him, and against so much of what his heart wants, and so Vax does: at his warm eyes, his glowing cheeks, his gentle smile.

Gilmore looks as if to say something else just as flirtatious, or something softer, perhaps, but all he says is, “You know where I am. Feel free to come by, any time.” Then, eyes sliding to Keyleth leaning against the wall, “Get her some water. Good night to you, Vax’ildan.”

"Good night, Gil.”

Vax watches his retreating back, stride light and loping, until it disappears from sight and then some. There’s far more commotion in the background now, and the soft, familiar warmth of Pike’s divine energy fluttering through the area.

Vex places a hand on his arm. “You’ve been very quiet tonight.”

“Have I?” Vax says. Vex gives him a look to remind him just how little playing stupid works on her. However, he’s going to do it anyway. “We off home, then?”

***

Vax scans the crowd. He cannot help himself. There’s a part of him that is saying it’s so he can excuse himself and melt into the crowd if he sees a glimpse of purple before the glimpse sees him, but who’s he kidding? He hates this kind of thing, all the pomp and the fanfare that his father thrives in, and it’d be much easier with his large, laughing presence at his side - oh, and Gilmore does not fail to impress. Despite everything, despite it all, there’s laughter and lightness in Vax's chest at the sight of Gilmore, perfectly diagonal, skipping along with Grog on one arm and Scanlan positively dangling off of the other.

“You look absolutely ridiculous,” Vax doesn’t hesitate to tell him.

“My, my, my,” Gilmore says, voice smooth as butter. “Sounds like someone is a little green-eyed.”

“Sounds like someone is,” Scanlan agrees, because all three feet of him are made up entirely of bastard.

“Not to worry,” Gilmore says, sliding himself out of their arms, and holding his own out for Vax to take. “May I have the honour?”

Keyleth laughs at something in the background, voice high and clear like a bell. Vax can feel his sister’s eyes boring into the back of his head. Well, he can’t hide from Gilmore now, so he may as well laugh with him.

“Oh, no, the honour is all mine, my good man,” Vax replies, linking arms with Gilmore. The brilliant smile with which he responds is almost enough to quell anything else inside him.

Vax wasn’t quite expecting to swan off into the crowd on his arm, but it's a damn lot more fun than dealing with more looks from his sister. He's introduced to merchants and mercenaries and representatives from all across Emon, all of whom are far better dressed than he is, and all of whom respond to his name with either, “Ah, yes, of Vox Machina, of course,” or “Oh, so this is Vax’ildan.”

Gilmore doesn’t even have the grace to blush at that, the bastard.

The sun is vanishing behind the horizon when Vax places a hand on his arm. He doesn't need to say anything before Gilmore turns to him with a smile.

“Going so soon?” he teases, waving away any response Vax might give. “It’s perfectly alright, darling. You need to be with your party. I’m sure we will see one another soon enough.”

“Thank you,” Vax says, before darting into the crowd. He only half-hears Uriel’s speech as he weaves his way back through the throngs of people, between all the gentle clapping and whispers of shock. Thank the gods for the goliath’s hulking frame, acting as a beacon for his sister’s location.

“Did you have fun?” are, of course, the first words out of her mouth as soon as he slips in beside her.

“Shut up.”

He’s listening to the speech and not really processing it when Vex touches his arm and points up at the sky. A flash of colour, too fast to form anything concrete, streaks across the sky from out of the cloud cover. One black, one red. Vax glances down at his sister, at the realization on her face - not here, not now, not her too - when the bells start ringing.

The crowd starts getting nervous.

Vex’s face is very, very still.

Of all the arcane users in the group, Vax has always liked Keyleth’s mastery the best.

That’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate the arcane prowess of the other members of his party, because of course he does. He couldn’t in a million years do that shit, it’s incredible. But Scanlan’s shit is a bit too ridiculous, Pike’s has a holy glow about it still so alien to him to despite it’s comforting warmth, and Tiberius’ ended up being friendly fire more often than not. But Keyleth, oh, Keyleth. There’s nothing quite so beautiful as her way with nature. The awe of sunlight where the sun shines not, searing all in it’s path, as terrible as the dawn. The beauty of her druidcraft, the flowers that bloom around her fingers like they know she is one to be cherished and loved. The magnificence of her waves of thunder, such immense power booming from her slender frame.

It’s be nice if that was the source of the sound, Vax thinks idly. If her magic was the reason for it, instead of a great big fucking white dragon what the fuck slamming into the side of Allura’s tower.

Naturally, everything goes to shit after that.

And Vax almost dies.

Again.

He’s really gotta stop fucking doing that.

There’s a lot of screaming, then not a lot of screaming. Vax thinks he prefers the screaming. Grog is hacking away at the dragon - a green one, this time, because of course they’re being attacked by four dragons at the same fucking time - to practically no avail. Vex is snarling something deep and dangerous from her very core even as he snatches at her cloak, tells her to run, run, run .

It’s Vex that says it. Of course it’s Vex that says it.

_Gilmore._

Vax strains his eyes as best as he can, but he cannot see a glimpse of purple anywhere. The haste in his boots thrums through his body but it is not match from the drum of his heartbeat and the beat of dragon wings, the melody of the screams. He could get to the tree before his sister does, before Keyleth does, barely processing the flash of purple smoke that indicates Scanlan has cast Dimension Door on himself and Pike, but he does not because his heart is stupid.

He should be grateful that his heart isn’t even more stupid than it already is and he isn’t running off into the decimated crowd, instead.

The last thing Vax hears as he leaps through the tree is Vex desperately calling Gilmore’s name.

***

It’d be nice, Vax thinks idly, if someone were to cast a spell like the Briarwoods’ did on him again. Then at least he would feel just as lost except someone with a better idea of what they were doing would be commanding him to do it. Of course he doesn’t know what he’s doing, none of them do, because it’s four fucking dragons with which they are dealing. But they do it anyway. As always, they do it anyway.

There is no afterwards. Not this time. Perhaps not even ever. But in the in-between, in their fabrication of rest and relaxation, he talks, and she listens. They tend to their wounded and they count their dead.

_Mother._

She is stronger than him and he needs her. He knows this, he’s always known this: one of the only things of which he is truly, truly certain.

He takes her hand.

Against all odds, she takes his, too

He does not deserve this. They do not deserve any of this, but he does not deserve them, either of them, any of them.

He holds her hand for a very long time, choking on his words as he explains as best he can how much they’ve fucked up.

***

It’s a beautiful day, beautiful like the city isn’t in ruins, like there aren’t four ancient dragons roaming the land as she meditates. It’s comforting, in a way, knowing that there are still things unaffected by this, that there are some forces greater than them.

Keyleth sits amongst the foliage, as if the sky was taking its cues from her, and says, “I sense a presence, a very weak presence - ”

"That could mean he’s far away or that he’s dead,” Scanlan says as Vex gasps and Vax’s chest tightens and he thinks, please, please,  please.

“His shop, it’s - ” her nose wrinkles, adorable, deep in thought. “It’s - he’s somewhere towards the promenade - there’s no Uriel.”

Vax doesn’t even try to feel guilty about the fact that he could not give less of a shit about Uriel right now. No matter what Keyleth says, no matter what his sister says, he could still be here. He could still be out there. He has to be, the options falling desperate from his lips.

Any shed of hope, any shimmer of light that isn’t dragon fire in this goddamn bitch of a shitty fucking situation goes up in flames as soon as he sees that Gilmore’s shop has been set aflame, too. That shred of hope burns white hot with fury in the pit of his stomach, a blister of rage as he storms into the rubble. He reckons he understands Grog a little more now, he thinks absently, as he holds a knife up to the scum’s throat and tells him just how eagerly, how easily he could gut him like the slimy fish he is. This feels right, he thinks. This feels good.

Even his sister’s voice does little to quell the fire burning in his stomach.

Keyleth follows him in her Minxie form, which is nice, but cracking his head open with a rock is much nicer, and the sweet slide of metal into flesh has never been quite so satisfying.

The shop is worse than he imagined and, after today, he can imagine a lot. The glass cases, that Gilmore stocked and shined so lovingly, lie smashed on the floor. Books, that Gilmore had kept so carefully, are scattered and tattered and destroyed, pages littered throughout the rubble. All his goods, for which he had worked so hard, of which he was so proud, reduced to so little. Not much more than a pile of rubble and all-consuming grief. His beaded curtain, behind which Vax had slipped so eagerly, ripped asunder. His bed, on which Vax had dreamed many times of being ravished and worshiped and loved, and ravishing and worshiping in return, completely destroyed.

There’s no sign of Gilmore.

His hands are beginning to shake.

Vex presses on where he cannot, because she will always, always be stronger than him and he needs her help now more than ever. There’s no sign of Gilmore but, under the remains of his bed, she finds a hatch that was unknown even to Vax. It’s peculiar to think of the number of times he has been on that bed, and never known the secrets that lay beneath. Then again, isn’t that always the case? Gods know there are many secrets beneath Gilmore’s smile that Vax does not know, and there are many secret that lie beneath his own skin that he would dread for Gilmore to uncover.

There was once a day when Vax would have happily given himself over and lain himself and all his secrets bare on the bed for Gilmore to explore as he pleased.

He is picking through the rubble when he hears her yell, trying to find something, anything, hoping to the gods beyond gods that what he’s trying to find won’t be something to remember him by, and dreading the thought that he might,

The wreckage is more than just a wreckage, visibly and palpably, and Vax’s chest bursts with pain just looking at it.

Then they find Gilmore, and Vax thinks that that burst of pain was nothing at all.

He can hear the words leave his mouth, frantic and desperate, but he does not recognise them. Gilmore is slumped in the corner, head bent over the blood that stains his velvets purple. Vax sways a little where he kneels, cradling Gilmore’s face, his skin cold with feverish sweat, sure for a moment that it’s all going to overwhelm him, these days of terror and grief and heavy, helpless rage. Beads of sweat are running down Gilmore’s face and joining the blood dripping down his sides into a puddle on the floor that’s much too large for comfort.

There’s an odd noise over the rush of blood in his head, the clink of metal against metal barely audible over the sound of his world crumbling around him: then a presence by his side, a familiar voice, then two. Pike and Keyleth gently nudge him aside as their careful hands dress Gilmore’s wounds, but Vax stays close to him, smoothing his hair again and again and again. It’s awful, and better than doing nothing, and strange, above all else. He didn’t know his heart could grapple with this many warring feelings all at once. Grief and sorrow and guilt are thick in his throat even as he thinks that his knees hurt, or registers the warm light of Sarenrae radiating from Pike.

Gilmore shivers occasionally under their gentle administrations as the flutter of divinity knits his jagged and broken skin slowly and surely back together. For one heart-stopping minute, Gilmore rises from the ground from the sheer power of the spell, and Vax catches him before he can clatter to the ground. His heart leaps in his throat as Gilmore shivers once more, then curls over, moaning and burrowing his head into Vax like a wounded thing.

He remains terrifyingly still for about thirty seconds. It feels like thirty years.

When Gilmore’s eyes flutter open and find his face, Vax thinks he has never done anything good enough to deserve this.

When Gilmore says, “Well, that’s always what I assumed I’d see in my last moments,” Vax thinks he’s definitely done enough terrible things.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E40.

_prelude_

_"I don’t want to go,” he says, “but I’m not leaving you."_

_Gilmore’s breath hitches in pain as he passes him to Keyleth. She buckles under his weight, Gilmore still only just keeping himself upright, and he aches and he aches and he aches._

_“Vax,” she says, irritated and understandably indignant._

_“Vax,” he says, tender and undemandingly anxious._

_Before they slink away into the night, Gilmore grabs his hand and says, “Be back soon, okay?”_

_It’s only when he’s darted back away again into the embrace of the shadows that he hears her voice, whisper sweet and nervous, in his ear. She’s saying his name._

_“Vax, talk her out of it. This is not the time to be looting for treasure. That’s only ever brought us grief. Talk her out of it.”_

_To his dying days, Vax knows he will never grow tired of the sound._

chapter 2 

Vex takes his hand to go find Gilmore. It's probably unnecessary now that they know he's out of the frying pan; it's Vax who has been thrown in the fire, a fire that burns with a different sort of flame entirely. They walk the hallways in silence, the other members of their party splintering away as they go, to bed or drink or otherwise. She grips his hand tighter as they approach Percy's door, abruptly reminding him that he's not actually the only one who gives a shit about Gilmore.

Vex, even still, is the one who does most of the talking. She speaks with the voice she uses when something terrible has happened; when she has looked at the world crumbling around her, stood up, and begun to pick up the pieces; when she acknowledges that the world is still moving and she has to keep moving with it. It is a voice Vax would do a great many things to never hear again. Pike smiles up at them as she talks, dressing a wound her spells could only do so much to heal. It is easier to look at her hands than the skin below, than the man normally so full of life lying so still on Percy's bed.

"He’s been conscious throughout the day while you were gone," he hears Pike telling them, but faintly, as if being spoken underwater; as if all of them are drowning, scrabbling at their sanity and unable to stay afloat. "But he’s got to rest a bit more. He’s still had a rough few days.”

"All right. I'll go tell the others," Vex says, in that grief-steady voice. "Thank you again, Pike." Her voice shifts, crisp, business-like. "Well, I think that's me for the night. Do make sure you get some sleep.”

“I'll do my best.” There's something so terribly sweet about how easily she's able to lie to them: her little replies, sweet as pie, that they all see for the mistruths they are and yet still accept. Whether it’s for their sake or her sake, Vax isn’t quite able to say.

“Sleep well, Pike,” Vax says before he follows his sister out the door.

They walk, wordless, to their respective rooms, made sluggish by the weight of the day. No words need to be said. What words could there be? Vax hugs her tight before she disappears behind her own door, her fingernails digging into his shoulder and her breath shuddering. She places a hand on his cheek and gives him the smile of their mother before she turns away, and that says more than words ever could.

Vax watches the door to her bedroom close, waits ten seconds, and walks right back to Percy's room.

“Hello?”

He places his hand flat on the door, running his fingers over the flaws in the woodwork. “It's me again.”

There’s a sound suspiciously similar to a laugh from behind the door. “You can come in, Vax.”

He’s through the door and closed it behind him in one quick, quiet movement, so not to disturb the occupant of this room or alert the occupants of any rooms nearby, with their twitching ears and tendency to tease. There’s a little bit of both from Pike, but there’s always a little bit of both from Pike and that's why he love her, really.

“I thought I might take over, for a bit,” Vax says, the words catching in his throat. “Let you get some rest.”

“Have you rested since this whole thing went down?” Pike replies, very pointedly, and she's right, he knows she's right, she's always right, but, hey, this time he might be a little right, too.

“No, but what have I been doing since then?” Vax counters. “Running around like an idiot, that's what. I might need my sleep, but you need it more. You can't look after your patients if you don't look after yourself, and I don't want Scanlan on my balls if he finds out I encouraged you to not rest as much you should. And he is, like, on level with my balls. That could be really bad for me."

"That could be really bad for you," Pike agrees warmly. "Alright, I'll leave him to you then." Her smile twitches, mischievous. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind you snuggling in with him."

"Pike - "

He's cut off by her hand gently taking his. "Just try not to wake him, alright? I wasn't kidding when I said he needs his beauty sleep."

"I won't, I promise,” he says.“If you could - if you could not - ”

“Not a word,” she says, giving his hand a little squeeze before letting it go, and Vax feels that he can breathe a little easier. “Sleep well, Vax."

"You too."

The door closes quietly behind her, and Vax finally lays eyes on Gilmore again. As promised by Pike, he is sleeping sound in Percy's bed. Safe, sound, and and entirely conked out.

Vax moves no further, not for a while. He just stands there and thinks, for a bit, and looks. It's much easier now that a sheet has been pulled up over the deep gash in his side. Someone, probably Pike, has wiped him down with a damp cloth, no traces of blood left on his face. His hair seems untouched, still in it's ragged horsetail, matted with blood and sweat and dirt, and Vax's fingers itch. They itch to pour water over his head, untangle all the knots, comb his hair until it shines and spills against the sheets. He thinks about that. He thinks about spending hours of his day combing Gilmore's hair, tying it and untying it and retying it into every braid he knows under the sun, braids which he has only spun in his sister’s hair. He thinks about his sister by his side and the realization on her face, about Gilmore in his arms and the relief on his. He thinks about the blood on his hands and the smell of gunpowder, of smoke. He thinks about his sister so close to death and Percy so close to something much worse than that. He thinks about the silver tongue of Scanlan and the devil tongue of Delilah and, as always, for as long as he can remember, he thinks of Keyleth, beautiful, standing under the Sun Tree. He thinks of how soft her hand was, how quickly she had yanked it from her grasp like it burnt. He thinks about the apologies etched into every line of her young face. He thinks of Gilmore, glorious, sleeping soundly in his bed. He thinks of Gilmore, slumped on the ground, life spilling from his veins, and the throat-clawing realisation that there was nothing he could do to fix it, only hold him and comfort him and pray that nothing more would cause him pain.

He thinks about how he prayed nothing more would cause him pain, and how he is standing by his bed anyway.

He’s already promised Pike that he would stay here, and he can’t break a promise to Pike. Yet he can’t stay here; he can’t stay at the bedside of a man whom he has danced around for years now, and keep vigil like an imminent widow. Then why did he do it? Why did he go to all this trouble to get Gilmore here, safe, to ask Pike to keep it secret, and keep it secret himself? Well, he just answered his own bloody question, didn't he. No matter how much he cares for this man, no matter how much he has wanted this man, no matter how much he loved this man, in his own way, that's all he wants, even if only for tonight. For him to be here, and for him to be safe.

The certainty makes things a little easier: that, and the plush armchair in the room because Percy really is a posh twat. Vax is just strong enough to drag it over to Gilmore's bedside without making too much of a racket. Slumped there, his body tugs his brain away from watchfulness and wakefulness, and he does not fight it as much as he should, the numbness of sleep and the nightmares it brings with it better than truth of wakefulness, the beat of dragon’s wings, his sister’s face twisted with rage, and his dear friend’s face twisted with pain.

***

Vax awakes to the most peculiar sensation. Gentle, rhythmic, and, strangest of all, on his head, the sensation sending little shivers down his spine. His body must have gravitated towards Gilmore sometime during the night as, from what can glean without opening his eyes, he's so slumped forward that he's using the edge of the bed as an impromptu pillow. He blinks his eyes open and the first thing he sees is Gilmore, and a soft smile Vax isn't quite sure he was ever meant to see on his face.

"Uh," he says. "Hey."

Gilmore's fingers do not stop carding through his hair. "Hey, indeed."

Vax straightens slowly, trying to ignore the ache in his back. Only the weight of the day and the fact that they fought four fucking dragons would ever get him sleeping in this position - that, and the space in the bed where he feels he does not belong, and the sweet smell of him that lingers on the sheets.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to - ”

“Oh, nonsense.” Gilmore's fingers have fallen from his hair but the smile remains, sweet and reverent.

“I didn't mean to fall asleep,” Vax repeats, a little firmer. “I was supposed to be keeping watch, make sure you're okay.”

“Well, not to be cheesy,” Gilmore says, thus guaranteeing that, whatever he says next, it's going to be pretty cheesy, “but I do feel a lot better now you're here. I mean, don't get me wrong, I still feel like I was partially disemboweled by dragon claws, but better than I did… gods know, whenever you found me. I must say, I should count myself lucky. Second time in a row I've woken to such a beautiful sight.”

“You should count yourself lucky,” he can hear the break in his voice, feel the heat behind his eyes, the tremble in his hands, hates himself for it, “You almost died, Shaun. If we had not - ”

“But you did,” he interrupts, voice heart-wrenchingly firm. "And for that I thank you. I am truly indebted to you.”

“Well, that's bullshit.” It is not enough to wipe the blood from his hands, the thoughts from his mind, the tears from his eyes. “You've saved my life more times than I can count - ”

“Oh, I've sold you trinkets and knick-knacks - ”

“At a very considerable price - ”

“I mean, how can I resist such a pretty face?” Gilmore says, and it warms his heart to see that smile, that twinkle in his eye before be grows more serious. “Vax'ildan. The whole city was burning and one of your first thoughts was to save me. How can I even begin to express how much that means to me?"

Not alone in his loss for words, Vax says, “You were always on my mind."

“Well, I hope that's not true,” Gilmore replies. “I don't know if you saw, but there were four great big fucking dragons out there.”

Vax laughs weakly. “Okay, maybe that's not quite true, they were rather large dragons. But you were high up there. I'm sorry about your shop.”

“Yes, that is certainly a pain,” Gilmore says with a deep sigh. “I certainly won't be selling you any fancy trinkets anytime soon.”

“Whatever money I might have saved on those trinkets from having a flirt with you across the counter," Vax says, "Believe me when I say that it's nothing, nothing, compared to knowing you're safe and alive - ”

“Well, why don't you take some of those trinkets off and get into bed?” Gilmore says, surprisingly smooth. He must see his hesitation, because he adds, “You have to rest at some point, it might as well be here.”

“You need your sleep, too,” Vax replies.

It sounds weak even to his ears. All Gilmore needs to do is hold his hand out and Vax is by his side, crawling onto the bed with as much gentleness as he is capable. His hand is not as warm as it is normally, vitality still so drained, but the calluses remain, rogh and familiar. Vax's knees sink into the plush bedding, hovering above Gilmore's still-prone form. He does not know what he wants to do, what he can do, what he needs to do. There is no blood but there is so much pain, the unsurety spilling onto the sheets: yet Gilmore still accepts him, wordlessly. Vax curls into his side and Gilmore curls an arm around him, pulling him in, pulling him close. He strokes Vax’s shaking shoulders. He kisses his hair, he kisses his brow. He murmurs meaningless words of meaningful comfort. It is terrible, and Vax tells him so, again and again and again.

“I should be the one comforting you.”

“Oh, Vax’ildan,” Gilmore says, voice achingly fond. “I cannot begin to tell of the comfort you bring me.”

“You are hurt,” Vax says.

“Yes,” he replies simply. “But I am also safe, and I am warm, and I have a very charming young man in my bed. What more else could I want?”

Vax brushes his thumb over his side, just to prove his point, and Gilmore hisses.

“Okay, I see your point,” he says, through clenched teeth.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have - ”

“No, no, it’s perfectly fine.” Gilmore lets out a long, deep breath; Vax can feel the muscles in his stomach relaxing under his touch. “Perhaps you could kiss it better for me?”

Vax tilts his head back to look at him properly: the sweat on his brow, the grief in his eyes. “You are bedbound and you are still flirting with me.”

That's when Gilmore kisses him, sure and sweet. There's so little distance between them, only the chasm between friendship and so much more, and he crosses it so easily. A soft gasp escapes him when their lips meet, Gilmore cradling his face in his hand, the bedsheets shifting beneath them. Vax rests his his hand on his chest, careful to not press on any skin too tender, without even thinking twice about it. Yearning bottles up somewhere beneath his ribs, gratified and agonized and warm.

When Gilmore breaks the kiss, Vax keeps his eyes shut: hanging his head until it is almost buried in his broad chest, the crook of his neck.

“Yes,” Gilmore says, simply.

“Shaun -”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, no, don’t apologise,” Vax says. “Never apologise to me.”

“Well, I was going to say that I shouldn’t have made assumptions,” Gilmore says after a moment. “But, then again, you did crawl into my bed in the middle of the night so I thought it safe to make an educated guess.”

Gilmore’s thumb strokes his cheek, the line of his jaw, and, gods, it’s so stupefyingly tender, and Vax knows he will be lost the second he looks up.

He fails. Of course he fails, and of course he kisses him, really kisses him, deeper and more demanding. Gilmore’s fingers curl at the base of his neck, sending shivers down his spine, and Vax thinks, oh, this is how troubles are forgotten, and struggles lost. One hand sneaks up Gilmore’s chest and around his neck, the other pushing him upright, longing to be as close as possible, bringing him as close as possible, his body betraying and rewarding him in equal measure.

"It was a very good guess," Vax replies after further, fervent kisses. They're all soft, all sweet, and almost everything that he wants. "I don't know if I can stay."

"No?"

They have broken apart once again, but Vax still has his forehead pressed against Gilmore's, sharing warmth, sharing air, sharing heartbeats. His voice isn't so much disappointed as it is merely mildly inquisitive, either too tired or too well-kissed to feel anything more, which makes it all so much worse.

"No," Vax confirms, although he does not draw away just yet. He can have this for a few more moments, he tells himself. They both almost died. He can give himself this. "I - I don't want to disturb your sleep."

Vax does not tell him the real reason, of course, because he cannot slide into someone's bed and someone's heart and kiss him and then tell him he's in love with someone else. He is not capable of such cruelty. This is a complication that can wait until the morning, that can wait until Keyleth smiles at him again, that can wait until all four dragons are dead and left to smoulder. Then, it can join the cavern of complications he is mining.

Gilmore laughs quietly, more of a breath than anything else. "If you're worried about disturbing my sleep, rest assured that I will never sleep better than with you next to me - and, besides. I can hardly have you sleeping in a chair by my bedside when you could be sleeping in my bed by my side."

Vax sighs. The man makes a fair point. Gilmore is moving very little at this point, whether out of pain or because he wants Vax to make the first move, he isn't sure. Whether he needs Vax to make the first move, to give him peace of mind. After seeing him so brash and so bold and so confident after so many years, after facing off with a fucking dragon, it settles strangely in his heart to know he can make Gilmore nervous.

Vax cannot go to his own bed. Not after today, not after all this. He cannot go to whom he really wants to go because he could not stand being turned away, not tonight of all nights. He cannot go to his sister because they are no longer children able to curl up in bed with each other after nightmares. This is so, so much more than anything their young minds could've brewed up to torment them. But he can stay here, in theory. Gilmore wants him to stay. Gilmore would practically be begging him to stay if he had an ounce less pride in him. Not that he dislikes Gilmore's pride, not at all, the man has so much to be proud of: but it would be easier, tonight, if Gilmore made the decision for him. If Gilmore made everything simple. And Vax wants to stay, he really does, it's just - it's complicated. The sort of complicated that even four dragons couldn't simplify. The sort of complication that, if the four dragons have it their way, may soon cease to be complications entirely.

It's Vax who kisses him, this time. "I will warn you, I am a fidgeter."

He had not realise how still Gilmore was holding himself until he sighs deeply in relief, tension draining out of his body. "As long as you don't kick me out of bed, I'm fine with anything."

"I'd never kick you out of bed."

"I'll hold you to it." His voice, more cheerful than it had any right to be, grows slightly more serious. "I would ask that you remove some of your filthier garments. It'll do me no favours to sleep next to armour caked with gods know what."

From somewhere within him, Vax manages to drag out the ghost of a grin. “You’ll have to buy me dinner first.”

"Well, technically I already have," Gilmore says, with a hint of his normal cheerfulness. "And I promise you, once this is all over, I will buy you the best dinners gold can buy.”

“This is not going to be over for a long time.”

Gilmore's smile falters. “No, I don't suppose it will be."

Vax does not move for many moments more. "Is it silly that I really don't want to move from your side? Even just to take off some shit?"

"Oh, absolutely," Gilmore replies. "And I understand completely."

It takes a little longer to remove himself, what with their aching bones, the decision to stay preventing him from leaving, and the fear that even slightly separating himself will make him want to separate entirely. He manages it eventually, hands unconsciously unbuckling and unstrapping the worst of his armour even as his brain struggles to respond to anything else. Gilmore watches the entire time. Some of it is lust, yes, or the shadow of it, things being what they are, but most of it Vax knows he would've seen reflected in his own eyes earlier: drinking the sight of him greedily, despite himself.

"I’m glad you're here," Gilmore says finally. "Even if it did take four dragons to finally get you in my bed."

Vax isn't quite sure how to respond to that. If it was merely a thinly-veiled innuendo, it would be easy, but it's more like a thinly-veiled innuendo itself thinly veiling a shit ton of deeper emotion Vax is far too confused and far too tired and far too thoroughly kissed to deal with right now. He tells him the truth, instead.

"I didn't want to be alone tonight." He drops one boot on the floor. This truth, for now, is easy enough.

"If that is what you're after, then I'm not the man you're looking for," Gilmore says.

The second boot drops to the floor. "That is not what I'm after."

Gilmore smiles. "Then I'm the man you're looking for."

"Always."

Gilmore accepts him even more willingly the second time, sliding between the sheets: now just in his breeches and untucked shirt. His sleep is a question mark, curled in on himself, head resting under the crook of his arm. Vax is more than content to let himself drift off, to be lulled into sleep by the warmth radiating from his friend.

Or, he would be content, if said friend wasn't shifting every half a minute.

“And I thought I was a fidgeter,” he says, not even bothering to open his eyes. “What do you keep on complaining about?"

Gilmore sighs, possibly slightly over-dramatically. "I prefer to sleep on my right, but that blasted dragon tore up that side and I can't sleep on it.”

It takes a moment to process exactly what he just heard. "Four dragons just destroyed our city and you're grousing about which side you can sleep on?"

He can hear more than see Gilmore's smile in the dark. "I suppose it is rather a silly thing to complain about. However - and this may come as a surprise to you - I am quite a cuddler when it comes to sharing a bed at night."

"Oh, really?" Vax says, surprising himself with how light his voice is. "I would never have guessed."

"No, and why would you?" Gilmore replies warmly. "I would - I would like to have you closer, but it is too painful."

Ain't that the fucking truth, buddy, Vax thinks. Ain't that the fucking truth.

"I cannot be as close as you would like," Vax tells him. "As I would like, but I am close enough."

"Yes," he says simply. "Yes, you are."

It's not quite the night's sleep he needs, but it is almost.

***

The second time Vax awakens, it is to an overwhelming warmth sweeping over him, the dawning realization that for once he is not sleeping alone. The name is on his breath as he turns over except the name is not correct. Who slumbers so peacefully by his side is not whom his mind conjured like a cantrip. It would be a lie to say it's not one who nonetheless sends a shiver of delight through him, but that delight is soon overwhelmed by guilt.

Vax had told her that he loved her.

Memories from last night - from a few hours ago? what time is it? it feels like the last day has endured an elven lifetime - filter through his sleep-addled brain, the kisses and words so eagerly shared. Are they cheapened by the conflict in his heart? By how part of him yearns to be in another’s bed when the heart of him is so gladdened to be here? Gilmore is so warm. Vax untangles an arm from the sheets to press the back of his hand against his forehead, but his fever seems to have receded whilst they slept. He doesn’t look - well, he still looks good, he always looks good, but he still doesn’t look well, whole, healthy, whatever word you'd use to describe it. He looks better, though, and Vax is able to relax, just a bit.  

The gentle movement disturbs him and Gilmore’s eyes blink open, his sleepy smile filled with so much affection mingled with so much incredulity - like he cannot believe that he is here, like he cannot believe that he stayed - that Vax cannot help but cup his chin and kiss him again, to soothe the ache in his heart as much as he knows he is merely suspending his dear friend’s heartache.

“Vax,” he murmurs into his lips. “My Vax. You stayed.”

The room is almost quiet enough to hear his heart break. “I did.”

“My Vax,” he repeats with a reverence that makes him shiver.

“Sleep,” Vax tells him. “I’ll be here in the morning, I promise you.”

Gilmore kisses him once more, clumsy, before sighing back to sleep. Vax stays awake a few moments longer. The warmth has cooled into something quiet and comforting, and he turns a little more towards him, curling against his less-injured side and falling again into an easier sleep than the events of yesterday should have allowed him.

***

The third time Vax awakens, the warmth by his side has receded, replaced with small noises of pain. His eyes blink open to see the wide expanse of Gilmore’s back, upright and clad in one of Percy’s fancier robes, legs swung over the side of the bed, and the man clearly struggling to move much more than that.

“Shaun?”

The noises of pain cease, and there are two seconds of silence. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you - “

“What is it, what’s the matter?”

Vax is upright in a second: pressing himself lightly against his back, wrapping his arms around his thick waist, resting his chin on his shoulder. Gilmore lowers his hand from his mouth, clearly having tried to muffle his discomfort, and leans back into him, tilting his head to press against his.

“Well, if you really must know, I was attempting to go relieve myself.” Gilmore’s voice still hitches despite it’s early-morning cheer. “It is turning out to be - rather more difficult than I presumed.”

“Well, come on, then.” Vax kisses a stretch of skin exposed by the robe sliding down Gilmore’s shoulder. “I can help you.”

He extracts himself from the bed only to wrap his arm back around Gilmore again, despite his half-hearted protests, and help him to his feet. It’s slow work, walking him across Percy’s room which seems so much wider in the face of this, but Vax murmurs nonsense all the way to distract him from the pain as best as he can.

“Oh, darling Vax,” Gilmore says at one point, thumb rubbing little circles into his shoulder. “What would I do without you?”

 _I don’t know_ , Vax thinks. _Hurt more. Hurt less. I honestly don’t know._

The crux of it all is laughing into the crook of Gilmore’s neck as he plants himself right behind him, wrapping his arms under and over his shoulders, acting as a stand to keep him upright as he relieves himself. Gilmore is alternating between scolding Vax for making him laugh because it means he can’t aim properly, and being unable to aim properly because he’s laughing too hard. It’s not the best morning Vax has ever had, by any means, but it’s certainly not the worst, either. It is better than he could have hoped, although not by any stretch of his imagination. He does not let his imagination stretch so far. It would feel oddly akin to a betrayal to do so, to think of one while with the other.

After Vax has gotten him back into bed, Gilmore cheerfully complaining the entire time, and gone and relieved himself as well, he hesitates at the door frame. Gilmore seems no less exhausted than he did last night but his shoulders are a little lighter, face smoothed in the peace only granted to the grief-stricken, to those who have been through all Nine Hells and lived to tell the tale. It is a peace Vax knows well, and a peace Vax would do many things to never have to see again. Vax watches him from the door and wonders what someone else would see in his eyes: if they would see the same gentleness so clear in Gilmore’s eyes in his own.

“I’m going down to get some breakfast,” Vax, slightly at loss of what to say when Gilmore is so uncharacteristically quiet. “Would you like me to bring you some?”

“Vax’ildan, darling, I would be delighted.” Gilmore’s eyes are already sliding back shut, the short trip to the washroom and back more than enough to wear him out again. “Breakfast in bed. I really am a lucky man.”

There’s a comfortable, companionable quiet as he collects a few of his things - his belt, his boots - and hesitates for a moment again at the door. Gilmore’s breathing is not quite as even as it should be: forehead creased with pain or worry, Vax isn’t sure which. It’s enough to clear the hesitation, to have him go back to the bed and kiss his forehead, smoothing the creases out with the pad of his thumb.

“I will be back soon.”

Gilmore hums, falling deeper into sleep. Vax does hesitate once a-fucking-gain at the door but only to stop and listen and make sure there is no one moving in the hallway, no footsteps he recognises, before he sneaks out of Percy’s room. Gilmore’s need to pee and thus need to rise early turns out to be a blessing in disguise as only his sister is awake to witness him collecting an almost absurd amount of food. After a sweet word to the cook, Vax is able to nab a tray, two cups of coffee, and, under his sister’s watchful eye, only one plate to load up with food.

“Two cups of coffee, hm?”

“I’m gonna need it, aren’t you?”

“I suppose.”

Vax finds himself staring, completely lost, at the array of food laid out on the tables in front of him. He has known him for years, has kissed the man and lunched with the man and slept in his bed, and he hasn’t a fucking clue what the man likes to eat. He ends up loading up the plate with a bit of everything - boiled eggs, various cheeses, strips of bacon, salted kippers, chunks of bread, glasses of wine. Anything Gilmore doesn’t eat, he reckons, he can eat and, everything that he can’t eat, he’ll just give to Trinket.

“You’ve worked up quite an appetite,” Vex comments. “What did you do last night?”

“Fought a dragon,” Vax replies, slightly sharper than he intended. At the look on her face, he moves to put a hand on her arm as a means of the silent forgiveness in which they are so fluent but finds his tray is piled far too high to hold it one-handed. “I’ll see you in a bit, okay?”

“Alright, alright, see you in a bit,” she replies, taking a break from loading up her own plate to take a big swig of wine. “Try not to give yourself indigestion, brother, dear, that really is a lot of food.”

Vax doesn’t even dignify that with a response, just concentrates on carrying the tray slowly and carefully back to Percy’s room.

When he hears light footsteps he would know in death enter the room behind him, and his sister’s voice saying, “Keyleth! What a surprise to see you down here,” Vax pretty much ignores the whole ‘slow’ and ‘careful’ thing he’s got going on.

Fortunately, for the rest of the walk which seems so much longer than it does normally, why does this castle keep on doing this, he only bumps into Grog who merely makes a snide comment about whether his skinny arse is able to handle that much grub before Vax cheerfully tells him to go fuck himself, and continues on in relative peace.

He halts once again outside Percy’s bedroom.

Fucking doors.

He ends up having to place the whole tray on the ground, opening the door, pushing the tray through with his foot and praying that he doesn’t accidentally spill the coffee or the wine in the process, and closing the door behind him feeling more pleased with himself than he probably should. Of course, Gilmore is awake to see that.

“Not a word,” Vax says, crouching down to retrieve the laden tray.

“I didn’t say anything,” Gilmore says cheerfully; then, when Vax has gotten close enough, “Oh, gods, coffee .”

“Hey!” Vax says as Gilmore takes one of the coffees, curling his fingers around the cup with a borderline unnecessary noise of pleasure. “You can’t have that, I need you to hold the tray.”

“But, Vax’ildan, darling, you bought me coffee,” Gilmore replies, and Vax does his best not to go even slightly red as his voice, very purposefully, becomes very unnecessary indeed. One of Gilmore’s eyes cracks back open again and he chuckles, placing the cup back on the tray. “Alright, fine, but only because it’s you.”

No sooner has Vax taken off his boots, slid back into bed, and steadied the tray placed onto Gilmore’s lap than has Gilmore picked up the cup of coffee again with another pleased sigh. Vax laughs quietly as he resigns himself to cutting up the food on the tray.

Gilmore looks at him quizzically. “Why is there only one tray? This can’t all be for me.”

“It’s for both of us, dummy,” Vax replies, spearing various things with his fork. “And you can barely lift your arms up, so.” He waves the fork self-explanatorily.

Gilmore smiles wide as he puts his cup of mostly-drunk coffee back down. “Oh, you old romantic, you.”

It turns out feeding someone else is a lot harder than it looks, and also not romantic in the fucking slightest, but fortunately both are content to slowly make their way through the massive pile of food really what was Vax thinking before them, talking about practically nothing at all, until Gilmore’s low appetite and Vax’s encouragements to at least eat a couple bites more fall to the wayside. Vax continues eating for a bit, Gilmore cradling a goblet of wine, but the food has long gone bland and cold.

“So,” he says finally as Vax dips his bread, slightly stale, into his goblet. “What has happened since I last saw you? You told me somewhat of the story when we last ate together, but - well. We were all rather in good spirits, some of us having consumed rather too many spirits, and I got the impression you may not have told me the whole story.”

When we were together last, Vax thinks. He says it like what has happened since then has not happened at all. He says it like what has happened since then is too much for him to even bare talking about.

Wine drips from the chunk of bread in his hand. Gilmore’s eyes grow a little softer.

“That bad, hey?”

Vax lowers the bread back down to the plate. “If you had asked me that this time forty-eight hours ago, I would’ve said, yes, it was that bad and worse, but now... “

He gestures wordlessly with the chunk of bread.

“Everything else seems to dwarf in comparison?” Gilmore suggests. Vax nods, and stuffs the bread in his mouth. “Quite literally, those dragons were massive.”

Vax nods again. Gilmore waits patiently as he eats, eyes sliding back close again as he takes slow, careful sips of his wine.

“Every time I come to you, it seems like I have just had one of the hardest weeks of my life.” His laugh is cold and bitter. “And, I mean, every time.”

“And yet you still come,” Gilmore says simply.

‘That I do,” Vax says, and tells him everything.

He tells him about Percy, about his history, and the slaughter of his family. The preparations for the feast, the confrontation with the Briarwoods, the bite in his neck; how terrified he was, how much of a fool he had been. GIlmore takes his hand and holds it tight when he says how he slipped into the arms of death once again, how he thought he would never see his sister again, how he doesn’t understand why this keeps on happening, again, and again, and again.

He tells Gilmore about the tremble in Percy’s hand.

He tells him about Scanlan turning them all into cows to trick the eagle. Parts of the tale they recounted the night before the dragons came but, when told in full, it does not fail to have Gilmore in stitches, wiping tears from his eyes, clutching his ribs with pain, and bemoaning them all for their improper uses of magic. Vax catches himself halfway through singing his praises of Keyleth, strong Keyleth, brave Keyleth, holding her bloodied hand up to the monstrous eagle, but Gilmore merely encourages him to speak on, curious to hear the whole bloody and bloody ridiculous tale. He does, slightly more careful of his words.

He tells him about the bodies on the tree, how small the one in purple was.

He tells him about the bloodshed. About the fury in Percy’s eyes, smoke spilling from him, how his sanity was slipping through their fingers like sand. The tide of the undead, the rise of the common folk, the blood that spurted from the neck of a young woman he could not help replace with his sister: how he almost died, again.

He does not tell Gilmore about the kiss. He does not tell him about the conversation under the Sun Tree. For all he has done, and for all he would do again, that is not a cruelty of which he feels he is capable. Not now. Not yet, perhaps, but certainly not now.

How the possession snuck through his brain time and time again, making him attack his friends, attack his family: how he almost subjected them to a certain doom with his reckless, again - how he held his sister’s lifeless body and he almost fucked that up, too. How he has caused pain and torment to so many, so many he cannot even count, he tells all without pause; but how he yearns and how he hurts, he does not, will not, say. He loves her, and that means he will leave her be.

He also tells Gilmore about the pie-eating competition just because he knows it’ll make the man laugh again, and laughter is needed in times like these.

“And now…”

“Now, there are dragons, and you’d rather the vampires,” Gilmore finishes for him.

“Something like that, yeah,” Vax says. “And to think that, just before this - and I mean right before all this, a conversation we had practically as we were walking out the door - I was telling my sister about how I didn’t know what we were doing, what any of us were doing, and why we were doing it, and now - ”

His memory roars with dragon fire, green and black and choking. His sister’s face, turned to the sky, immortalized in his mind with realization.

“Now I think I do,” he continues weakly. “And I wish I didn’t.”

Gilmore places his hand on his, looks him deeply in the eye, and says, “This, this moment, this is why you do what you do.”

It takes him a hot second to realise what that reminds him of.

“Oh,” Vax says. “Oh, you cheeky bastard. You’re using your own line on me.’

“Well, you put it that way - “

Vax kisses him again, even as Gilmore laughs. His laughter dies quick and they kiss for a while, slow and easy. They give and take comfort as easy as breathing, no words needed or wanted.   

“It would’ve been a shame if you had died,” Gilmore says when the kisses begin to slow. “That time with the vampires, or that time with the dragons, or any of the the other frankly ridiculous amounts of times you’ve almost died, it really would have. I would have been terribly disappointed.”

There’s a lightness in his voice that really shouldn’t be appropriate, and Vax feels so pathetically grateful for it he kisses him again. “Because you would’ve never have gotten to kiss me, is that it?”

“No,” Gilmore says. “Because then I wouldn’t have had anyone bring me breakfast in bed.”

That punches a quiet laugh from his chest. “I’m sure someone would’ve brought you up something.”

“Yes, but none of them would’ve been quite so handsome,” Gilmore replies flippantly, and Vax laughs again.   

“You’re just trying to cheer me up,” he says accusingly, and Gilmore pulls away, pressing their foreheads together. His eyes are closed, forehead creased with grief, breathing heavy, and Vax waits patiently even as the guilt sits deep and heavy in his stomach.

“I am never very good at knowing what to say in this situations, I’m afraid,” he says finally, voice thick in a way that Vax has never heard before, in a way that Vax would do a great many things to never hear again. “Listening, I can do. I am more than happy to listen to you speak, but knowing what to say - ”

“You do not need to say anything,” Vax tells him. “You are here, and you are safe, and that is all that matters to me.”

Gilmore’s hand squeezes his, hard; his breathing shudders in that tell-tale way, and Vax lets him ride it out: lets him shake and shudder and stays strong for him throughout.

“You know,” Gilmore begins, when the shaking subsides. “If you were slightly more reprehensible, you would’ve said ‘then don’t say it’.”

“What, so that I would kiss you again?” Vax replies, and Gilmore hums an affirmative. “I already have you in my bed, why would I use a pick-up line like that?”

“That is true.” Gilmore withdraws truly now, leaning against the bedframe and scanning over the bedroom with tired eyes. “You know, I never quite pictured your bedroom looking at all like this.”

Vax takes that as a cue to draw back as well: putting the long-abandoned tray on the bedside table, fixing the covers, and generally letting Gilmore compose himself as best he can. “You thought about my bedroom a lot, then?”

Gilmore chuckles. “Says the one who just said he wouldn’t stoop to using cheesy pick-up lines.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t stoop to using cheesy pick-up lines, I was just asking why I would use them in that scenario,” Vax points out.

“Why did you stoop to using a cheesy pick-up line then?” Gilmore asks, with just a touch of joy in his voice that he might have caught Vax out.

Vax grins up at him. “Because this isn’t my bedroom, this is Percy’s.”

“Oh, gods,” Gilmore says. “Does that mean I’ve made out with you in dear Percival’s bed?”

“Yes, yes, you have,” Vax says, sliding back under the covers with him. Gilmore instinctively lifts his arm to wrap around him, and hisses with pain. Vax opens his arms in response, and Gilmore rolls his eyes as if so hard done by before settling in his arms. When Vax will no longer be surprised at how natural it feels, he does not know. “On the topic of Percy, and the rest - “

“You do not want them to know about this,” Gilmore finishes quietly, and guilt is a sound that beats like a drum. Gilmore does look at him as he speaks, and Vax does not know if that makes it better or so, so, so much worse. “I understand. This is - well, it’s not unexpected, but it is sudden and, if what I can glean is at all accurate, and I am pretty sure it is very accurate, you are about to leave again for god knows how long to try and kill four ancient dragons that almost killed both you and I as well as Percy and the rest.” Gilmore’s thumb rubs circles into his hand. “Maybe in another life - if we get another life - maybe in that life I could make you promise that you would return to me, but who am I kidding?” His laugh is hollow and bitter, so strange to hear from such a vibrant man. “I have had this night, and this morning, and, no matter what happens next, I will always have these moments.”

“Don’t speak like I’m going to die,” Vax says.

“Don’t kiss me like you’re going to die,” Gilmore says, and there is nothing to say to that. Nothing that Vax can say to deny it, or regret it. He does not deny it. He cannot regret it. “So I understand why you don’t want them knowing. Gods know that Scanlan is bad enough without knowing you spent the night in my bed - ”

“Percy’s bed,” Vax says, and Gilmore groans.

“Please, do not remind me,” he says. “I will not say a word, that I can promise you. But please do not expect me to hide my devotion, not when there are dragons in this world and you’re literally about to fight them.”

“No, of course not,” Vax says. “They all know how you feel about me, anyway.”

Gilmore laughs. “That they do.”

“I mean, you teleported all the way from Westruun just to see me,” Vax continues. “You’re not subtle about it.”

“And I would do it again in a heartbeat,” Gilmore says, and there is such a joy in his voice that Vax nudges the side of his head with his nose so he turns and Vax can kiss him again.

He kisses him like a man sent off to die.

“I’m sorry.”

Gilmore says nothing, just kisses him again. “You should probably go get Pike.”

After a moment of silence, Vax says, “If you knew it, you would’ve said dear Percival’s full name, wouldn’t you?”

“The bastard just has such a long name,” Gilmore replies as Vax laughs, and maybe not everything will be fine - in fact, most things won’t be, will never be again - but maybe this, maybe this one thing, whatever is hovering in the air between them, will stay safe and sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! It'd be real sweet of you if you commented. Have a good day.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E44/E45.

**** _ prelude _

_ It’s cold in Whitestone. Not as snow-dappled as it had been a month ago, but chilly nonetheless. _

_ They make the most of it, pressed against each other in one of the many guest bedrooms of Whitestone, sharing warmth and secrets under the sheets. _

_ “I won’t be gone for long,” says one. “I’ll be gone a couple days, max.” _

_ “Don’t promise me you’ll return,” says the other. “One day you’ll won’t be able to keep that promise.” _

_ “No, probably not,” says the first.  _

_ “But do promise me you won’t suddenly go zealous on me,” says the other. _

_ The first laughs, says, “That I can do,” and kisses him again. _

chapter 3

Whitestone is nice at night. Maybe one day he'll actually tell Percy that instead of punching the bastard in the face. Not that he didn't deserve it, but the sentiment remains. It's nice, the city, now it has been rid of the vampires and the undead. 

Most of the undead.

Vax shakes himself and keeps walking. 

The stars seem different here. They shouldn't be different here, yet different they remain. They seem to watch him more closely. It's also very quiet, the nighttime streets almost devoid of people even if the day has begun to thrum with life again. Vax barely needs to keep to the shadows to stay unseen. If he has it his way, he’ll end up knowing the secrets of Whitestone better than Percy ever did, but Vax has long learnt and long hurt that he rarely has it his way. 

The house takes a while to find. Pike had left a letter, now neatly folded and tucked away in Scanlan's pocket, informing them of the quarters she had been gifted for herself and her patients in the city nearby but Vax had not walked these streets in his youth like Percy had. He also - stubbornly, foolishly, and vaguely aware that one kind look his way could break him - does not ask for directions after he has left the castle, staying in the shadows and the silence. 

Had this been yesterday, Vax would have focused on the symbol on his glove and let Sarenrae guide him.

Has this been yesterday, Vax would do an awful lot of things. 

It's very late when he finally finds the house, an oddly charming red-brick thing that settles something in his heart. The house is silent; the whole street, the whole city is silent in a way which, had this been yesterday, he would have called deadly. He knows better, now. He knows much, much worse.

He also knows better to knock at the door of a sickhouse at this hour of the night. 

Vax's hand hovers in the air, loosely curled into a fist.

Window it is.

It is not only the stars that watch him, now. A raven sits on the windowsill of his room, cocking her head from side to side and staring at him with big, beady eyes as he sneaks around. The first window of the ground floor has curtains beyond which Vax cannot see, the second is bricked up, but over the third the curtain is only half closed. The figure in the bed is barely visible in the moonlight bar the vaguest of outlines. Vax knows it's him, though. Of course he knows it's him. 

The lock on the window would be difficult for almost anyone else but he's him so it's fine except it's not fine it's not fine at all nothing's ever going to be fine again.

The window is very cold. Vax closes his eyes and breathes in, breathes out, breathes in, breathes out, his forehead pressed against the glass. His heart still feels like it is being torn from his chest when he leans back but he opens the window anyway. His hands tremble as he quietly climbs through. The hilt of the flame dagger between his teeth, he lands on the floor with no more than a whisper of existence and regrets it immediately. He shouldn't have come. He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be sneaking into Gilmore's room and Gilmore's heart and Gilmore's bed when his heart still, despite himself, yearns for another.

A flash of silver catches his eye, unknown and peculiar. Vax crouches down and runs his finger over the finest string of silver thread that he has ever seen in his entire life. He traces it, again and again, mind whirring to the sounds of the night. It takes him a second to recall Tiberius telling him, long ago, of a spell that can alert the caster whenever a creature enters a warded area.

" _ Of course, you can set it to allow your friends and allies to pass as they wish _ ," the ghost of Tiberius chortles in his ear. " _ Which I would, clearly, do for all of you and it would make keeping safe at night so much easier. I just wish it was available to me and not just those damn wizards _ !"

Gilmore had allowed him through. Gilmore knew Vax would come - or, at least, had hoped for it very badly. Also, Gilmore can use spells available to wizards which Vax definitely thinks is pretty cool.

Vax closes the window.

It has only been two days, and he has been surrounded by friends the entire time, and yet he still aches with loneliness. This, at least, is something he can soothe: shucking off his boots, removing his cursed, godsforsaken armour until he is left in only his pants and surcoat, and sliding into bed. Even in sleep, Gilmore reaches for him, draping an arm over him without a shift in breath.

Vax listens to his breathing for a long time. 

***

Magic trembles through a touch on his shoulder. Vax recognises it very dumbly as that of a hand. The arcane warmth flickers in and out of existence, between which sometimes seems like hours and sometimes no time at all. He begins to count it. One. Two. Twelve. Fourteen. Eighteen. He loses count at some point. Three. Five. Eleven. His heart beats in his feet. The arcane warmth flickers out, and appears once again. It trails over his shoulder and gently, achingly gently, tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear. 

_ Vax _ , a voice says, and it's warm and concerned and familiar. He nuzzles into the hand unthinkingly, stroking his hair, wiping tears from his face.

_ Vax _ , another voice says, and it is cold and commanding.

_ Come to me _ , the first voice says, quiet, begging.

_ Come to me _ , the second voice says, and there is no pleading in that tone.

_ Please, Vax _ , the first voice says.  _ I cannot reach you from here. _

"Darling, do you know where you are?" the first voice continues. "Do you know who you are? I know it's difficult to speak right now but I need you to tell me your name."

"Nightmare," Vax chokes out. "Nightmare, it was a - "

"It was a nightmare, that's all it was," the voice replies, warm and soothing. "Now, can you tell me your name?"

"Vax'ildan," he says, his own croaky and sore. "Brother of - "

"I know, I know," the voice says, cutting him off very gently. "And where are you, Vax? You can just say the city, if that's easier."

"I'm in Whitestone," he replies, and thinks of the stars. "I’m with you." 

"That you are." There's a shadow of a smile in Gilmore's voice. "And how old are you, Vax?"

"I am twenty-seven," he says, and it washes over him once again, that their last birthday together could have truly been that: the last birthday he would've spent with her on this plane of existence because he would be here and she would be dead.

When the arcane hand flutters into existence once again it is on his own hand, and Vax grips it like a lifeline.

"You know, I don't think I knew that," Gilmore says, after a beat. "I have to say, I presumed you were rather a bit older. It's making me feel rather like a cradle-snatcher."

"You're not that much older than me." 

"Oh, you sweet-talker, you," Gilmore says, just this side of teasing. "Vax."

The hand flutters out of existence and Vax is left gripping nothingness. He hears a few more whispered words and, when it flutters back into existence, he grips it tight again.

"Vax," Gilmore repeats, just this side of desperate. "Vax, I cannot reach you from here. Come to bed, please."

Vax grips his hand, but doesn't say anything. 

"I think we need some light on the situation, don't you?" Gilmore says. "Would that be all right?"

Wordlessly Vax unsheathes the flame dagger, watches the light dance across his hand.

"Oh, why does that not surprise me," Gilmore says, and his voice is terrible with love. 

Vax looks up finally to see Gilmore stretched out on the bed, one hand curled around his stomach, the other hand reaching out to him, futile. Even in the moonlight, the pain is visible in the tension of his body, in the lines around his gently smiling mouth. The hand flutters out of existence once again so Vax reaches for the real one instead. 

"Rather more comfortable than sleeping on the floor, don't you think?" Gilmore says as Vax settles back into bed, careful to not press against anything still painful.

If he was more careful, he would not be here at all.

"I had been in bed with you." The sheets here are not even nearly as comfortable as those at the Keep or in the castle, but Gilmore's arms are just as warm and welcoming. "I think I must have fallen out."

"And were you going to tell me you had snuck into my bed?" Gilmore asks, amused.

"Yes, when you woke up," Vax replies, relaxing into him, the press of skin against skin. "Why, are you complaining?"

"Not in the slightest, it's just that it would've been nice to have been woken up."

"You need your sleep."

"I need - " Gilmore cuts himself off, swallowing whatever he is not yet brave enough to say. He sighs, long and deep. "Well, you're right, I do need my rest, but I would like to see you more."

"You're seeing me now."

"I would like to be doing a lot more than seeing you now," he says, and kisses him.

"You are the absolute worst at pick-up lines," Vax tells him when they break, pressing their foreheads together, and feels more than hears the laughter in Gilmore's chest. It does little to settle the ache in his own. 

"Yes, yes, that is true," Gilmore says and, gods, it is so good to hear his voice again. How many days has it been? Two? Three? To think that he used to go weeks without seeing him, months, seems strange. "At least I didn't say I would like to be seeing a lot more of you."

"I mean, really, it has the same implication." And yet days, weeks, months, he might go without seeing him again. 

Gilmore gives him another, brief kiss before settling back down into the sheets. "An implication that, due to my current state, must still remain only an implication."

The disappointment in his voice is so palpable that Vax cannot help but smile. "All in good time, my man, all in good time." 

"Oh, if we both survive this - "

" _ When _ we both survive this - "

" - we will be having so much we-survived sex," Gilmore finishes, voice so bright and bold and so gloriously happy that Vax kisses him again.

"What about you, how are you?” he asks when they break. "I'm sorry I didn't come visit you during the day."

"Oh, don't worry about me," Gilmore says airily. "I'd far prefer you to come visit me at night if it means I have you in my bed."

"I still should have gotten word to you as soon as we arrived," Vax presses.

"Someone did get word to both me and Pike as soon as you arrived," Gilmore reassures him. "And that was more than enough, to know that you were safe and sound. Don't worry about me, not when the whole world is at stake. Besides, it's not as if I'm going anywhere anytime soon." 

There's a hint of something else under the bravado, something small and trembling in the night. His finger is tracing a circle into Vax's shoulder, a small, absent-minded movement. 

"Tell me how you really are," Vax says. "And I want the truth this time."

There's a moment that trembles as his words sit in the air, in the small space that still remains between their bodies, and Gilmore sighs. The rush of air is very loud in the quiet room. "Truth be told, I miss you terribly. I hate to say it, I do, but you asked for the truth so I shall say it. I miss you terribly and it gets harder and harder every time you leave." 

"Shaun - "

"But," Gilmore cuts in gently, "I know why you have to leave, and I understand why you have to do it, and I am thankful that you do it. Well, that's not quite true. I am not at all thankful that you leave but I certainly prefer it to the alternative," his voice is firmer, now, speaking above anything Vax could try to say, "which is lying in bed with you waiting for the dragons to come and burn us as we sleep." 

Gilmore's hand reaches up to tuck another loose strand of hair behind Vax’s ear again. "I can wait until after you've killed the dragons to lie in bed with you for a disgracefully long time, if you will have me."

"You are a glorious, glorious man, Gilmore," Vax says. "I don't think I will ever have the words to tell you how much I think so."

Gilmore tilts his head down until his lips brush his hair. "Well, not to be so forward in your time of need, but there are other ways to tell me."

Vax kisses him by the light of the flame dagger and it feels wrong and it feels right and love must truly be a terrible and wondrous thing if both can be true.

They drift into an easy silence after that. Gilmore's breathing is deeper and easier but there still remains the hitches of pain he’s grown to hate. It's comforting, it should be comforting. But in the quiet of the night his mind insists on pulling from the dredges memories of his youth, and in every memory there she is. 

He is seven and waking up in his mother's home and she is sleeping next to him and she will not wake up. He is twelve and in his classes and he is bored to death and she is sitting at the desk next to his and she is actually dead. He is seventeen and in a tavern and they are laughing and beer is spilling down his chin and it is blood that spills down hers. He is twenty-two and is killing in cold blood to save her skin but no amount of blood on his hands can stop the blood under her skin from running cold. He is twenty-seven and the blood under his skin runs cold and he is shaking and no amount of death can revive him.

Vax curls even closer to Gilmore, siphoning all the warmth he can absorb into his chittering skin, not desperate enough to pray for sleep to take him but certain enough to not disturb the man sleeping beside him as he tosses and turns and tremors.

Just when he thinks he has gotten away with it, mind still far from sleep, Gilmore says, "Would you like to tell me what all that was about?" 

His voice is light but it is not cheerful. He lies still but he is not tense. He is not cold and he is not dead.

"Yes," Vax says. "No. In all honesty, I don't know what I want."

Gilmore doesn't say anything, the bastard; just turns his head toward him, kisses his forehead. Vax even gets the sneaking suspicion that he's smelling his hair. He doesn't say anything and doesn't say anything and doesn't say anything and Vax almost hates him for it, hates him for not knowing, hates him for not having the right words to say even enough he knows there is no right thing to say that could fix this and Gilmore holds him and kisses him and waits for him and Vax does not hate him at all.

“She promised to stay close to me," he finally manages to say, choking on the words like a man dying. "She stood in our Keep, in the only home we have known for years; she stood next to me and she promised that she would stay close to me. That is all she had to do. That's it, nothing else. Just stay close to me and stay safe, and stay - five seconds, she was out of my sight. Five seconds, that's all."

Dimly, he feels Gilmore still beside him, hears the hitch in his breath as his words sink in. Less dimly, he feels his breathing even out, the hand on his shoulder continuing to rub small circles into his skin with his thumb. He focuses on that, that tiny movement, the smallest and strongest of anchors, as the silence wrenches the words from his mouth.

"She was so cold. She was gone for -  not even minutes,  _ seconds _ , but she was ice-cold. I didn't - I couldn't do anything, I was more helpless than I have been in my entire life, and, gods,” the rage bubbles in his throat, in his lungs, threatening to choke him, “Now, I have to, I don't know, just keep on going! Wake up in the morning and pretend like I haven't held my dead sister in my arms, blink like I'm not seeing her dead body every time I close my eyes,  _ breathe _ like -”

“Vax, you don't need to pretend at all,” Gilmore says, the alarm loud and clear in his voice. "Vax, your twin sister has died -" 

"She isn't dead, Shaun," Vax snaps. "Kash revived her.'

Hurt falls cleanly across Gilmore's face. "Then why didn't you say so?" 

"Because it doesn't change the fact that I held her dead body for fifteen fucking minutes!"

"I never said it did!"

"Then why are we - ” Vax pushes himself away, sitting up so he can't see the look on Gilmore's face, a directionless fury building behind his eyes, in the lines of his shoulders. He knows he’s lashing out. He knows and, somehow, can’t find it within him to stop. “What are we even fighting about?”

“I don't know!” Gilmore says, pushing himself upright also though it very clearly pains him. “Forgive me if I say I am  _ very _ confused right now!”

“Well, that makes two of us!"

Gilmore collapses back into the bed with a strangled noise. He covers his face with his hand. He does not look at Vax when he says, “If you're going to leave, just leave.”

The words hit him cold and heavy in his throat. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No, of course I don't want you to leave,” Gilmore shoots back, too quick and too pained to be anything but true. “But it certainly seems like you do, and - ”

“I don't want to leave,” Vax replies, just as quick.

“Okay,” Gilmore says; then again, slow and careful. “Okay, good. So at least that's established.” He rubs his hand over his face, exhaustion so clear in every line of body as it aches through Vax’s own. “I am sorry for reacting so badly, but I am rather confused, rather tired, and in rather a lot of pain - as I don't doubt you are, as well.”

Vax takes that as a cue to settle back down into the sheets, close enough for their shoulders to brush but no more. 

"Vax, I want you to be able to talk to me," Gilmore says, weary down to the bone. "But it pains me to know you'll happily take comfort from me when I'm asleep, and get angry when I try to give it while awake.”  

The guilt settles heavy in his stomach, even as the maelstrom of his emotions grows dull and distant and quiet. "I'm sorry."

Gilmore takes his hand and squeezes it, his smile just visible in the darkness. "You are perfectly forgiven, dear Vax'ildan. Now," he sighs. "Why don't you start again, and I promise not to interrupt this time."

"Alright," Vax says, and tells him everything. As always, he tells him everything, words stumbling over each other until he reaches the same part of the story, until his hands are trembling with the phantom chill of her skin.

“And then Kash revived her,” he continues, voice hollow. “And now she's as alive as she ever was but I can't get it out of my head. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, I'm so grateful I can barely breathe sometimes, but that doesn’t change the fact that she was dead! It doesn’t make it any easier to, fucking,  _ process  _ that, but I don't want to make her feel like shit because I'm not over the fucking moon about the fact that she died!” 

Vax takes a deep breath, struggling to rein it all in, drowning in the sheets; Gilmore's hand takes his and presses it against his chest so that Vax can feel it rise and fall. It's strange but it helps, his heart rate slowing until their chests rise and fall as one and Vax feels slightly more capable of breathing again. Gilmore hums, a small, comforting sound, but leaves him with his thoughts, and offers no words of comfort. Vax appreciates that, weirdly enough. There is no greater comfort in this moment than the fact that is sister breathes once again, and no greater distress than that, for several long minutes, she was not.

“Rebuilding a temple is not the same as never having seen it destroyed,” Gilmore says finally. “Your sister being alive is not the same as never having known her to be dead.”

The tangle of grief lodged deep in his chest, somewhere under his ribs, loosens as his words and the truth in them sink in, only to tighten again when he realises he still has more to tell. 

“That's not all of it, though,” he says, voice hoarse with the effort it takes to push the words out. “I broke my promise to you.”

“What do you mean?” Gilmore says, voice quickening a notch. “You came back. That’s a promise kept, in my book.”

“No, no,” Vax says, clearing his throat. “I may have accidentally become rather zealous in my time away. The nightmare I had, it wasn’t about the dragons, or the vampires, or the fact that my sister died - well, it’s partially about the fact that my sister died - what do you - what do you know of the Raven Queen?”

“She’s the goddess of death, and the matron of ravens,” Gilmore replies, voice slow and careful. He is, Vax realises, panicking. “But that’s about as much I know, why?”

“She was dead,” Vax says, the truth of it ringing horribly in his lungs. “She wasn’t dying, she was  _ dead _ , killed in part due to one who does not take kindly to resurrection, and I couldn’t - I couldn’t just sit there and watch, do  _ nothing  _ when I could do something to change that. So I made a deal. An eye for an eye, if you will, because I guess I’m not the only one reacting badly. I told her to take me instead, and she agreed, and I don’t know what it means, I don’t know what any of it means, but I still feel her. Everywhere I go I see fucking ravens, and everytime I sleep I’m plagued with nightmares, so that’s what  _ that  _ was all about, if you really wanted to know.”

Gilmore remains silent for several breaths longer. Vax stares at the ceiling and blinks the tears away as best he can. He has, he registers dimly, gotten hysterical. It’s too much, everything, all of it, to be lying in Gilmore’s bed and Gilmore’s heart with the weight of the world on his shoulders and the stain of a raven on his soul; and it’s too much to ask for Gilmore to help shoulder the burden when all he deserves is a shop, or two, and a man who loves him, candid and uncomplicated. 

Then, into the ringing silence between them, Gilmore says, “I take back everything I said about you getting angry. Before, it seemed a little much but, now I know you’ve made a deal with an ancient goddess of death, makes  _ perfect  _ sense. Probably would've been easier if you had become a vampire."

Vax laughs weakly despite himself, even if he knows the theatricaĺ tone hides something far more skittish underneath. “Yeah, somehow I don't think she'd want to make me her champion then."

"No, probably not." There's a pause before Gilmore says, "It'd be pretty sexy if you were a vampire, though."

Vax smiles. "Not quite as sexy as you being a dragon."

"Oh, nothing would be as sexy as me being a dragon," he replies. "Also, please do not take my jests as indication that I am ambivalent because, believe you me, I am freaking out quite a bit right now."

Vax rubs his hand over his face, and wonders bitterly how long this boundless grief will lie inside him. "Look, it's not as if I expect you to know exactly what to say, or what I need," he says. "I don't even know what I need! Except for my sister to never have died and I'm shit out of luck there. I just - " 

He stops himself, catching the irritability rising in his throat, hating himself for it; but, where words fail him, Gilmore does not, bringing his hand up to his face and kissing it gently.

"Well, if it's someone to talk to you need, then I'm all ears," he says. "If it's someone to vent at, even - and if it's just some company or a warm bed, then I'm the man you're looking for." 

"Always," Vax says. "I am really sorry that I yelled at you.”

Gilmore hums again, a quiet understanding sound.  “Oh, it’s quite alright. Gods know I would be losing my mind if I was in your shoes."

It suddenly occurs to Vax that he has no idea if Gilmore could actually ever be in his shoes. “Off-topic, but do you even have any siblings?” 

“No,” he replies, a little wistful. “No, my parents met rather late in life - I’m sure I would have had many other siblings if they had met but a few years earlier, but the fates did not make it so.”

“I have another sister,” Vax says, after a moment. “She’s seven years old and she loves animals and bugs and saying words she  _ really _ shouldn't be saying."

“Oh, how  _ delightful _ ,” Gilmore says, the smile so evident in his voice before faltering; “I am… not very good with children, I must admit.”

“She’s alright,” Vax says, turning on his side to curl up closer. “You just need to tell a few good stories or make a little magic and she thinks you hung the moon.”

“That isn’t terrifying at all,” Gilmore replies mildly, turning on his side as well.

Vax laughs, the sound odd in the quiet room, before pressing his forehead against Gilmore’s and saying quietly, “I don’t know if I can stay.”

"If you are abandoning me for your sister, I will be most hurt."

“Shaun.”

"I know, I know," Gilmore says wearily. "It is just so easy to resort to humour in times like these. Too easy, which is probably a clue I shouldn't resort to it. Thank you for telling me all that. I know there’s ridiculously little I can do to help, but -”

“You do help, you do, you always do,” Vax says in as gentle a voice he can manage, but it mostly sounds like a rasp, as hushed and hurting as he is. “Shaun - ”

"I know." Gilmore kisses him with a touch of what seems like finality. "Feel free to love me and leave me anytime you like, Vax'ildan," he says against his lips. "As long as you make sure to love me first."

Only then does he draw away, rolling onto his back and leaving him be.

"I'll stay for a while," Vax says. "At least until you fall asleep."

Gilmore has no response but to pull him towards him, and settle deeper into the sheets. Vax dreads sleep but it comes for him nonetheless, as he has learnt all things he dreads eventually do. Morning finds him still in Gilmore's arms, woken by the rattle of a cart on cobblestones in the alleyway next to them. Barely even dawn, a shopkeep setting up for the morning, and only by the realisation that he isn't entirely sure when he'll next see Gilmore does he allow himself one more act of selfishness. Vax very gently shakes him until he comes to, his dark eyes blinking slowly in the low-light.

"Dawn already?" 

“Mhm.” He cannot bring himself to apologise when he knows in his heart he is not sorry. 

Gilmore kisses his forehead before nestling back down into bed. "Well, thank you for waking me. Do be careful.”

"I will." 

“And don’t make deals with any more gods.”

“I won’t.”

"And Vax," Gilmore says, almost teasingly, just as he's climbing out the window. "You can knock on the door next time, you know."

Vax smiles. "I know," he says, and drops to the ground without a sound. He does not allow himself one last glance back at Gilmore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you commented, that'd be cool.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E56 and E57.

_prelude_  


_"And Gilmore?" Pike asks. "Has he slipped through your fingers, or have you painted yourself into a corner with him?"_

_They're sitting at the edge of a pool hidden in the basement of the mansion, far away from everyone else - well, almost everyone._

_“I could ask the same thing about him,” Vax replies, nodding at the other gnome’s retreating figure._

_"Oh, I don't know," she says in one, long breath, looking after him with worry round her mouth. "If anything, I've slipped through his ."_

_"I think he'd find his peace with that,” Vax says._

_"He did,” she says. “Or he will, I guess. He’s grown a lot in the last couple months.”_

_Vax huffs a quiet laugh that echoes around the pool. “Has he?”_

_“He has,” Pike says with a small smile she gives to the water. Her toes only barely skim the surface where Vax is submerged to the ankle. “Not much, but a bit. It's okay, Vax. I know. I know you hope I wouldn’t, but I do.”_

_Her words settle quiet in the water, lapping against his ankles. He lifts his leg out the water, and watches the droplets fall and splash against the surface._

_"You're a wise woman, Pike Trickfoot," he says, after a moment, “and I have missed you."_

_"I've missed you too," she says, "but it still feels like you're avoiding me."_

_His foot hits the water with a splash. “I don’t want to do that. Not now, not ever. I don’t - he hasn’t slipped through my fingers but someone has, I think.”_

_She hums, a quiet, sweet sound, shaking the droplets off of her legs. “She does love you, it’s just that - ”_

_“It’s just that,” he says, and that settles too, although louder, uneasy. “How much as he told?”_

_“Not much,” she says, soft and light and careful. “Just, you know, sometimes he’ll ask if there’s any news, and he’ll sometimes seem a bit happier after you’ve paid him a visit.”_

_Shit, Vax thinks._

_“I just wanna let you know that this is also something you can talk to me about, okay? Even though I know you don’t wanna,” Pike continues. “It might not be, y’know, as grand-scale as a bunch of dragons but it’s still important. I worry about him, sometimes. I worry about both of you.”_

_It’s the tone of her voice, perhaps, that has her words settle in his heart. Words that mightn’t have done if not for the memory of one crisp-clear morning several weeks before, his body warm and trembling in his arms - then another, before that, her body cold and still, and before that, and before that, and before that. Words that might not have done if not for that blood-soaked day, her lips frozen in shock against his: that night of warmth and worry and rage, his lips warm and safe and smiling. It’s the gentle advice that only genuine heartache could impart that has him really hearing her._

_“It’s confusing, isn’t it,” Vax says to their unsteady, untethered reflections in the water. “When you want someone, but don’t know how.”_

_It’s Pike’s turn to fall quiet now, tracing patterns in the ground with her toes. Her feet look strangely tender like this, small and soft and barely half a foot long._

_“His heart is somewhere else,” she says miserably, which is not what Vax was expecting at all. “Even if I was with him, I wouldn’t be happy cause I’d always be thinking, y’know, what if he’d be happier with her? Especially as I know he’d be happier with her, and that’s okay. I’ll find my peace with that cause I love him very much and I want him to be happy. But, yeah, it’s confusing, and I turned Scanlan down cause it wouldn’t be fair on him, and I’m glad that I told him the truth even if he turned out to be as confused as I was - and maybe that’s why I’m talking to you about it? Cause I can’t fix my own problems, and I am so bad at taking my own advice but I just - ”_

_She sighs, loud and heavy, as his mind works double-time to keep up, drawing in more and more guilt with every breath._

_“I’m just looking out for you, I guess,” she says, voice small and tired. “Both of you.”_

_The water seems much colder than it had done before. It trickles down his spine, cruel and unforgiving._

_“I never,” he says, “I never meant - ”_

_“I know, I know,” she says gently._

_“I was going to tell him, the night before the Conclave attacked, but I didn’t, because I’m a fool, and I’m a coward. I never, ever wanted to - to lie to him, or lead him on - he almost died , Pike,” his voice breaks on the words, quiet and desperate, “almost bled out right in front of our very eyes, and when I held him it didn’t feel like a lie. When I kissed him, it didn’t feel like a lie. Every night I’ve spent by his side hasn’t felt like a lie. I haven’t lied, it’s just that - ”_

_The words catch in his throat, and he cannot speak any longer. Vax thinks he might dive in after all. It’d be better than sitting here, submerging himself until it’s setting fire to his lungs. It might even feel good: to focus on that, on the simplicity of physical pain, instead of the weight of what’s just been drawn out of him sitting so heavy on his shoulders. That weight would not be there, in the water. Keyleth has a spell that allows you to breathe it as if it was air. Would she ever cast it for this, he wonders. Allow him to sink to the bottom of the pool for hours on end until the heartache drowned._

_He knows she would never sink with him but, If he squints, if he concentrates really hard, he can still see them, embracing at the bottom of the pool._

_“I don’t want to hurt him,” he tells the water, sorry and quiet._

_“I know you don’t,” Pike says, “but I think you already might be.”_

chapter 4

It’s early afternoon when they emerge from the Sun Tree because magic is fucking weird. Vax is pretty sure, no matter how powerful his friends become - no matter how powerful _he_ becomes, a helpful little voice in his head reminds him - he will never get used to it. To his surprise, there are people in the streets. The heartbeat of the Whitestone is weak compared to the height of what Emon once was, but there are folks bringing in trade, selling produce from the local farmyards and children playing in the streets. There's a community learning to breathe again. It’s the first real chance they’ve had to see life return to Whitestone. Percy in particular looks pleased, watching the people bustle by with a quiet sense of pride and what Vax dares to call a few tears in his eyes. Vax is content to stand with him and watch for a moment as well, smiling at those who recognise them and wave, no matter the tug in his heart pulling him somewhere else.

That moment, that little scrap of peace, does not last long. Time is fast and time is fleeting and, before long, Vax knows they will have to leave again with little to no knowledge on when or if they’ll be returning. In truth, he wants to hide. In truth, he wishes none of them were with him. The family catacombs under Whitestone remain as empty as they made them the day the Briarwoods fell, but it does little to ease Vax's heart or the quick pace he is itching to set. It’s only when they are making their way down a familiar tunnel, the same tunnel in which they fought Orthax, and hears a familiar voice from up ahead that he finds the resemblance of peace.

He turns the corner at a much faster pace to find him deep in conversation with the Realmseer. The latter, hunched forward with his white hair and balding top, turns around to spout some sort of nonsense at him; and Gilmore - glorious, gorgeous, Gilmore, healthy and whole - positively beams at the sight of him, a sweeter sight than he has been in the entire time Vax has known him.

The rest do the sensible thing, the polite thing. They ask after him, after Whitestone, after the ziggurat, and Gilmore responds obligingly to each and every one of them. Joy radiates so clearly and so cleanly from the man as he thanks both Kima and and a delighted Pike for the strides he has taken in his recovery, and Vax just stands and stares. There is a tension to him still, a slight stiffness in how he moves that has not quite subsided, but he’s gesturing wide and smiling bright and there are none of the hitches in his voice that Vax had grown to hate during the nights they had spent together. And so Vax stands aside, content to savour the sight of him, heart swelling in his chest.  

“However, before anything else goes underway, I believe there’s a very important bit of business that I must attend to,” Gilmore says, after only a few scant minutes of conversation.

Vax tries to not let the disappointment get to him. He’s a busy man, after all, is Gilmore, even in Whitestone, and it's not as if there’s anything official between them. Vax has just been away for the gods know how long and Gilmore hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him for weeks. Did he expect some grand reunion? No, of course not. Did he expect slightly more than a couple minutes of conversation as a party with only a few glances - although they were brimming with all of his usual warmth - his way?

To say Vax is slightly taken aback when Gilmore walks straight towards him and embraces him, right in front of everybody, would be an understatement.

“Hey, you,” Vax murmurs, only for his ears, as he wraps his arms around Gilmore’s shoulders, wanting to say so much more but knowing that there are so many eyes on them. “I can't wait to kiss you later.”

“I can't wait to do much more than that. _Vax._ ” Gilmore says his name like a prayer, cupping his face and staring into his eyes like he had feared he would never get the chance again. “Vax’ildan. Light of my life. Smiling boy, I have _missed_ you.”

Vax isn’t able to get another word in edgeways before Gilmore is picking him up and swinging him around, making him weightless in his arms and in his laugh, and, gods, had he really considered it, that night so long ago? After he himself had swept Gilmore off of his feet, had he really considered bringing him up so high and then bringing him down so low? The gods know he had. Perhaps in another universe, he did. Then he catches a glimpse of Pike, smiling as delighted as the rest even as Vex worries loudly about his wounds, and the guilt thuds in his chest even as it quickens at the mere presence of the man.

“Ooh, I shouldn’t have done that,” Gilmore says as he sets him down, batting Vax away as he tries to check his progress and kid himself he knows anything about medicine when all he wants is another excuse to touch him. “Alright, now I can say hello to the rest of you, I just _really_ needed to do that first.”  

“Oh, _now_ you can say hello to the rest of us?” Scanlan complains.

“Oh, shut it, gnome,” Vax says, catching himself off guard by the sheer delight in his voice as Gilmore greets the rest of the party.

Even Pike finding his side as Scanlan gets his hair ruffled and saying, “Remember what we talked about, okay?” does little to temper his good mood, the peculiar thrill that runs through him every time he catches a glimpse of his whipcrack smile.

“I will,” he says, as Gilmore shakes Percy’s hand, thanking him profusely. Pike looks a little wistful at the sight. “I promise.”

When Gilmore embraces Keyleth, he ducks his head and gives the floor his smile instead, swallowing around the lump in his throat.

When he finally returns to his side, Vax wastes no time in linking arms with him as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Oh, you are a sight for sore eyes. I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you.”

“I could say the same thing about yourself, as my sight is terribly sore,” Gilmore replies, most likely aiming for suave but the colour in his cheeks and how he ducks his head to hide it only endears Vax more. “But, please, these tunnels are dank and not becoming of us. Do join us all for dinner now that you’ve returned, or I shall be most displeased.”

“Oh, before dinner,” Keyleth says, so bright-eyed and curious that Vax cannot help but smile. “I think we were all just curious on the state of the spinning orb of death.”

The rest fire question after question, although thankfully none regarding their linked arms, but Gilmore just waves them all away. After some more inane chatter, and a wink from Vex, Vax finds himself blissfully and terrifyingly alone with him. He unlinks their arms as Scanlan disappears from view, splintering off with all the rest, and reaches down to take his hand instead.

“It’s really good to see you on your feet,” Vax says, the truth of it swelling in his chest. “It’s the best smile I’ve had in ages.”

“You and me both,” Gilmore replies, looking at him with such open affection that Vax has to look away.

It's only by sheer force of will and the knowledge of just how much of a little bugger Scanlan Shorthalt can be that Vax doesn't drag him into the first secluded spot he sees and kiss him senseless right there and then. Gilmore, gods bless the man, shows no similar restraint, knocking him up against the bedroom door and kissing him breathless the second they step through the threshold. The back of his head hits the door with a loud thud, and Vax winces with pain even as his hands, already reaching for him before they’d even closed the door, tangle in Gilmore’s hair.

“Oh, gods, sorry, sorry,” Gilmore babbles, beginning to step away before Vax tugs him back in, wrapping his arms around his neck to pull him even closer.

“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbles against his mouth, all other thoughts of honesty and integrity tumbling from his mind.

He forgets about the advice from Pike, the scrutiny from his sister - gods, even the smiles from Keyleth, forgets most everything but the press of Gilmore’s warm body against his, the press of his mouth. The arm that wraps around him in return is almost possessive, Gilmore's other hand cradling his face with a terrible tenderness Vax hasn't known since - well, the last time he melted in the arms of the man. Any attempt to break is half-hearted at best, and non-existent at worst, both coming back for seconds, or thirds, or fifths. Vax wants to kiss him for every day spent away from his side, every night spent away from his bed. For all his sins, that is the truth of it.

"Hey, how d'you think it'd go down with the party if we just stayed here?” he manages to get out at one point, Gilmore having redirected his attentions to his neck. “If we didn't go down to dinner and just stayed in bed for, I don't know, twenty-four to forty-eight hours?"

"I think Scanlan would stand outside our door playing what he insists is romantic music,” Gilmore replies, breath hot and heavy against his skin, “your darling sister would be threatening to break down the door, and Grog would _actually_ break down the door.”

“Somehow, I don’t think you really care,” Vax says, pulling back so he can look him in the eye. The grin comes wide and easy at what he sees: his cheeks flushed, his hair a mess, his eyes blown and hungry.  “Do you?”

“I would if it were your sister,” Gilmore says with his whipcrack grin. “Although that’s more for your sake than mine.”

“Oh, gods, please shut up about my sister, I _beg_ you,” Vax says, pulling him back in to catch his mouth again, to feel the scrape of his goatee against his chin.

“Let me remind you that dinner is in half an hour,” Gilmore says as Vax rucks up the front of his robes.

“Hmm,” Vax says. It’s not so easy, it turns out, to get at his trousers with their bodies so pressed together.

“And we should probably, I mean," Gilmore says even as he braces one hand against the door, the other still clasping his neck, thumb brushing gently at his earlobe.

“Probably,” Vax agrees, kissing his way up his jawline.

Gilmore tilts his head with a whimper, baring his neck for him to do as he please. “It might - ”

“Be a bit obvious?” he breathes against his ear, brushing his fingers up and down his happy trail and smiling as Gilmore shudders under his touch. “I think we're long past that.”

“I just think that maybe… oh, come, now,” Gilmore says as Vax kisses him once again.

“You know, that’s what I was kind of thinking about doing,” Vax says as he finds out just how happy the trail is.

Gilmore groans, first at the pun and then again, loud and wanton, eyes fluttering shut. Vax grins even brighter at how abruptly weak-kneed he becomes at a mere hand down his trousers, before Gilmore kisses him so soundly his head hits the door again and all else falls by the wayside.

They get down to dinner five minutes late, smug and somewhat short of breath. Fortunately, they're not the only tardy ones. Only two of their party beat them down: Grog near the middle, already with a large tankard half-drunk in front of him, and Scanlan, sitting at the far end of the table, his head in the book he's been stuck in all week.

"You stink of sex," Grog greets them. "Like, you absolutely _reek_ of it, have you two finally - "

"You are mistaken, big man," Vax says, clapping his hand against the goliath's meaty arm. "I think you'll find it's actually _you_ who smells of sex, not us."

Grog sniffs the air with a look of intense concentration. "Yeah, you're probably right. Nothing quite like wielding your longsword to work up an appetite, ey, Scanlan?"

"Ey, indeed, Grog," Scanlan agrees, not tearing his eyes away from the page.

"He's been reading that thing nonstop for days," Grog tells Gilmore as they take their seats. Vax is quite sure he hears a little bit of petulance in his voice. "Which is fine, cause, you know, magic item and all that, but it does mean he's a bit boring to be around."

"Who's a bit boring to be around?" says Percy, appearing behind Scanlan in the most ridiculous finery Vax has laid eyes on outside of Emon.

"You are, Freddie, didn't you know?" he says, and the whole thing quickly devolves into chaos.

"I really hope Grog's washed his hands," Gilmore murmurs in his ear as the rest find their way to the table, laughing and cursing in turn.

"Have you met him?" Vax replies under the din, glad for the eyes on the arriving Lady Kima instead of them. "Probably hasn't washed his hands the entire time I've known him - and, if that's your idea of dirty talk, then you're _really_ mistaken."

Gilmore presses a kiss against Vax's pulse point and says, "Oh, darling boy, you have no idea."

Then he leans back, slouching in his chair as if he hasn't a care in the world, the attractive bastard, and snaps his fingers, calling for wine to be poured and food to be brought with one hand, and holding Vax’s hand under the table with the other. Vex looks at them with keen eyes, Keyleth barely looks at them at all, and Vax becomes hilariously aware the entire time that Allura and Kima are holding hands exactly the same way under the table across from them, but beside that he notices little else. They have much more important topics of discussion, after all. Vax listens keenly through all four courses (and cheerfully rags on Percy for the need to have four courses), even when he hasn't a bloody clue what they're going on about, only throwing in his two copper when the discussion of where the actual vestiges may be residing is raised.  

The dinner eventually comes to a end after long, fraught discussion and fractured planning. Allura leaves looking terribly guilty after all she has said, Kima by her side. Vex goes off with Percy to talk shop, Pike goes off to tend to some patients, and Grog races out of the dining hall very fast to go do whatever it is he does. Vax watches with his heart in his throat as Keyleth does not follow suit, slipping away to the front door, into the cold, cold night.

Scanlan, however, does not leave at all. He brings out his book again, puts his feet up on the table (although with some difficulty), settles down to read, and does not fucking leave. Vax would be happy to sit for a little longer by Gilmore’s side, mostly in silence as they both sip peacefully at their wine, until he realises that Scanlan is turning the pages of his book very, very slowly.

“Are you not thinking of getting some rest, Scanlan?” Vax asks.

“Nope,” Scanlan says, popping his p’s, because all three feet of him is and always will be made entirely out of bastard. “Are you not thinking of getting some rest, Gilmore?”

“It wasn’t rest I was thinking of getting,” Gilmore replies, leaning back in his chair like a cat with the cream. Vax could kick himself for how attractive he finds it.

Scanlan grins and closes his book with a loud snap. “That’s all I needed to know,” he says, clambering down off his chair. “Stay safe, kids. Use protection. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“That doesn't give us a lot of leeway,” Gilmore says as Scanlan puts his book back in his bag.

“Yeah,” Scanlan says, eyes widening in horror. “If I wouldn't do it, that means you really shouldn’t do it.” He winks at them and strolls off, calling over his shoulder as he goes, “Make me proud!”

Vax laughs, shaking his head, and only laughs more when he realises Gilmore is doing the same.

“I can see why you didn’t want to tell people,” Gilmore says. “And by people I do mean Scanlan.”

“Yeah, we would’ve been dealing with those sorts of comments for a month,” Vax replies.

“Talking about things we should’ve been dealing with for a month - ”

Gilmore holds out a hand, eyes twinkling with rakish, wicked delight.

“Shall we?”

***

It’s not as if he’s nervous. Of course he’s not nervous. It’s just Gilmore, after all. He’s kissed dozens of times by now. He’s slept with him, multiple times, even if not quite in the fashion that he is intending tonight. He's also got the man off, for fuck's sake: had him panting against his neck, braced against the bedroom door of a castle a vampire once dwelled inside, and yet his stomach still dances with nerves and arousal alike. Conversation is light as they make their way up, simple discussion of the dinner that was not actually able to happen at dinner from all the doom and gloom and dragon-talk, and the air between them seems to thrum with anticipation.

The light from the flickering sconces reflecting in a pool of dark oil smeared across the hallway about two feet leading up to his bedroom door was not quite what Vax was anticipating but, considering how quickly Grog had bolted from the dinner table, probably something he should have seen coming.

“Some peculiar friendships you have within your party,” Gilmore says as Vax crouches down and drags a finger through the oil. “Rather considerate of him to have already supplied the lubricant.”

Vax lifts his hand to his face, winces at the fume that emanates from it, and does his very best to not have any sort of reaction to what Gilmore has just said.

“Yeah, we’re not gonna wanna be using this,” he replies, because two can play at that game, and scrapes some up into his hand. “Come on, let’s have some fun.”

“Not that I’m complaining, but this isn’t quite the sort of fun I had been expecting to have this evening,” Gilmore says mildly a moment later, watching with considerable amusement as Vax writes something as immature as it is mood-killing on Grog’s door.

Vax gives him his most winning smile as oil drips from his hands, any anxieties he might have had having dissipated in his laughter. “You’ve gotta admit, it is pretty funny.”

“Oh, absolutely.” Of course, it being Gilmore, he could’ve used a smile that would’ve had him in 8th place with anyone else and still won him over. “I thought he couldn’t read?”

“I picked specifically small words,” Vax replies, finishing the second ‘o’ of ‘poo’. His finger hovers in the air for a second before he settles on just drawing a dick instead of anything that would kill the mood more than it already has.

“I can’t believe I have to have sex with you,” Gilmore says, shaking his head fondly.

“You don’t have to,” Vax says.

“Oh, no, believe me, I absolutely have to,” Gilmore replies staunchly. “I just can’t believe it.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E58 Part 1 of 5.

_prelude_

_"Vax? Vax?"_

_Her voice drags him slowly awake. His thoughts stutter, then snap into sense as his sleep-slow mind tries to locate the danger, he must, if he doesn't - he finds none. There's not even a dagger under his pillow: only Gilmore, curled around him and dead to the world, unused to such rude awakenings. He would relax back into the sheets if not for Keyleth at the door: her face only just visible, her red hair dyed silver by the night. Her eyes flit from him to Gilmore, sleeping satiated beside him, and widen before she withdraws into the darkness._

_"Oh, gods, sorry, I didn't - I didn't realise - "_

_"It's alright. I'm not, uh, decent."_

_For all she has seen him in various stages of undress, Vax still finds himself pulling the covers up to his chest. Gilmore may have banished the events of the night as quickly as they came, but the scent still lingered in the air._ _  
__  
__"It's okay, I've got you something." Her pale face appears once again as she tosses a pile of folded material onto the bed. It lands with a soft thump and she retreats back into the shadows. “I'll be outside, okay?"_ _  
__  
__"Okay."_ _  
__  
__She closes the door quietly, and Vax withdraws himself from Gilmore's warmth with only a little reluctance. The gift turns out to be a silken robe, blue and beaded and obviously well-crafted. Perhaps something Percy gave her? He slips into the robe and out of the room as quick and quiet as he can, lingering only to consider kissing Gilmore's still-sweaty forehead and then consider against it. He finds Keyleth dithering outside the door, looking at everything and taking in nothing._ _  
__  
__"Is everything all right?"_ _  
__  
__"Yes, it's just - " she huffs, blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face. "You know, the last few weeks have been really stressful, and we haven't been talking so much recently which is also really stressful, and, I don't know, I just really wanted to talk to you. Is that - I mean - "_ _  
_  
_Vax places a hand on her arm, as reassuring as he knows how, and she melts under his touch. "Hey, it's okay, it's okay. I know I haven't exactly been - the best of friends, recently, but you can always talk to me. Always."_

_"Yeah, I know, I just - "_

_She ducks her head for a second, her long hair falling to hide her face. When she looks back up at him, her smile has his heart leaping into his throat and finding a home there._

_"Would you walk with me? For a bit?"_

_"Of course," he says. "For you, anything."_ _  
_ _  
_ _She's oddly quiet as she leads him through the hallways and up the stairs. Vax savours to silence, and the warmth of her body against his when she links arms with him, half-convinced this is still some odd dream. He pushes the guilt aside in favour of helping a friend, perfectly content to let her lead him along. It's only when they reach a higher floor on the Western Tower, and she holds opens an intricate door for Vax to pass through, does Keyleth finally speak._ _  
_ _  
_ _"I know a lot has happened between us in the last few months, and a lot that hasn't happened that should've," she says, voice grief-steady. "I wish I could say how sorry I am for that."_

_She's led him to the edge of a wide balcony that Vax has never been on before. As he looks out over the sheer wonder that is Whitestone Castle, he finds himself wondering why that is. The moon is nearly full, the white light illuminating the densely-forested countryside surrounding the castle, and Vax's heart feels the same. Why here? Why now? She's in heart's reach, elbows on the balcony, worry round her mouth and a sadness in her eyes it pains him to see when he knows he might be the cause of it._

_"How many weeks has it been since the Sun Tree, Vax? Much of the world has moved on to newer, greater threats, but true pain never really heals.” Keyleth turns to him, their faces so close now their noses almost brush. “You've moved on, Vax, and it hurts. It hurts deeply, and continues to hurt. Agony, for weeks, months. Pain I never experienced before you.” Her voice deepens, lower than he thought she could ever speak. “It’s all I can think about.”_  
  
_Vax is struck with the sudden realisation that this is probably not Keyleth, but it's not quite as sudden as the pain._

_Keyleth pulls him in, sinking the blade deeper and deeper into his stomach. “It’s **all** I think about.” _

_There’s a flicker to her form: a flash of not skin, but fur. Not teeth, but whiskers. Not one he loves, but one he hates._

_It’s a short and bloody battle._

chapter 5 

As much as he is loathe to admit it to himself, Shaun Soren Geddmore is long used to being alone.

That's not to say he hasn't had his fair share of romances. He did _more_ than his fair share of gallivanting in his youth: not quite on the level of one particular gnome or goliath, but far more than the rest of them, he would hazard to guess. It’s a definite perk of not being prone to peripateticism. There have been a few long-term loves he was loathe to leave, and a few short-term ones he was not. Most came, and all went, and then came life, and business, and success. In short, his proverbial bed had been rather empty for a while before Vax'ildan elected to join him. He can count on a pixie’s left hand how many nights they have spent together in the mere weeks since then, and can count on the pixie's right hand how many nights he has spent with anyone else since the day they met. Waking alone is by no means out of the ordinary for him.

But to wake alone, when he did not fall asleep as such: to wake to his lover not by his side, to wake with someone else in his bed, to a strike across his back as he lies as helpless and naked as the day he was born -

Shaun would prefer to a lifetime of solitude to this.

The wound burns white-hot, like an iron just fresh out of the forge has been pressed into his skin, but it's not all that burns. Like raising a hand to shield your eyes from the sun, fire bursts from his palm, the flame striking his assailant in the shoulder and setting their cloak alight. They rear back with a pained hiss but the stench of charred skin is not enough to prevent another strike. The hilt catches him by the hairline with a sharp jolt of pain, blood pouring down his face and into his eyes.

“ _Intruders! Intruders!_ ”

His cry, at least, is not alone in the night. Even muffled by the stone that surrounds him, the air is brimming with noise: metal slamming on wood, metal clanging against metal, thumps against wood and stone and flesh. A gun goes off, louder than the rest, followed by a heavy wooden door hitting stone, a fleshy body following soon after. More gunshots follow but his ear is too untrained to figure out what is hitting what, or whom. There's a thunderous boom from - oh, gods, _somewhere_ , and Shaun is more than happy to match it with one of his own.

The sound of the sickening crack as his assailant’s head splits against stone is almost satisfying enough to make up for the searing pain in his back, the agony serving as a willing wellspring for his anger. The power of his birthright trembles through him as Shaun raises his hand and the figure with it, the bed shuddering underneath him for the second time that night at the sheer force of it. Held aloft like a ragdoll and just visible by the light emanating from the rune on his forehead, at a glance his assailant appears to be a humanoid in dark leathers, a cloak, and a hood - so much like his darling Vax’ildan - but he gleens no more before there's nothing to gleen at all. They're hardly worth more than a glance.

He closes his hand, and smiles.

The crack of their skull wasn’t quite satisfying enough.

His rude awakener contuses into nothing more than a ball of flesh and cracked bone, the blood spraying like a foundation onto the walls, flooding onto the stone floor below. It should be a sickening sound but it plays only as music to his ears. Shaun twists his hand tighter and tighter like he's wringing their neck himself just to get a drop more blood out. To his disappointment, his wrist begins to protest much sooner than he'd prefer - he really has been using it rather a lot tonight - and soon enough the fleshy remains hit the stone with a wet, satisfying thud. Shaun wipes the blood out of his eyes and flicks it off to join the puddle on the floor. In the moonlight, it looks quite black.

Before he can stop to take a breather and figure out just what the _fuck_ is going on, the bedroom door flies open, and the scream when this new pain in his ass is hit with another bolt of fire is high and familiar.

“It's okay! It's okay!” they shriek, lighting their own fire with one hand and patting their cloak out with another. "It's me! _Gods_ , that hurt."   

The fire turns out to merely be lighting the night; the cloak, a nightgown; the figure, Keyleth, wild-eyed and terrified. Shaun does not lower his hand, his wrist aching and heart beating triple time.

"It’s not the night to be doing that to me!”

“I know, I know! I didn't expect - oh, gods - "

By the light of her fire and the faint beam from his forehead, Shaun is just able to see her cover her eyes and rear back from the door, the hallway beyond flashing with a light as brief as it is powerful. It lights up the room enough to reveal Vax's armour still scattered about the floor from when it was discarded so carelessly a few hours before.

“Oh, Pike, you’re in your birthday suit!” he hears Grog yell out in the hallway. “Are you all right?"

"Hey, I mean, I'm not the only one - "

Grog, clutching his axe and grinning bloodily, is whom Shaun sees first upon storming out the door, looking as sleepy-eyed and brimming with murderous rage as Shaun feels. The smell of blood and flesh in the air is ripe and fresh, already a few bodies scattered lifeless around the hall. Vex'ahlia is nowhere in sight, nor her brother to his increasing panic, but there is rather a lot of Pike in sight, bloody and naked and radiant.

“Glorious Gilmore, indeed,” Grog chortles, very obviously sneaking a peak down his person.

“Yes, quite,” says Percival, glancing between Shaun and his own sword, and, really, any other time, Shaun would be soaking it up, he really would, but now is _not_ the _fucking_ _time_.

“Gilmore,” says Keyleth, the only one with any sense among them. “Assassin on the Western Tower - _Vax_ -”

“They jumped off the tower,” adds Pike.

Without another word, one hand reaches for her bare shoulder, the other for his love, and, in a rush of air and purple, panicked energy, the others disappear from sight. What they're replaced with is Vax'ildan, face-down and scattered out on the stonework; above him, a snarling sneering tiger-creature, holding aloft a dagger that will never meet it's mark; and, above it all, the gentle tunes of a bardic voice.

It's a short and bloody battle.

***

As the ash settles, Vax takes a second to breathe. The air is thick with burnt flesh, the sickly sweet smell of it, and his own blood atop that, and yet still Vax breathes, slow and deep. His body throbs with pain, skin scraped from stone and flesh torn asunder, but it feels distant, remote. He hears Vex yelling from the skies, Pike thanking Grog, and, above it all, Scanlan being the glorious little shit that he is, and _breathes_.

“So, I think I understand,” the gnome says, from where he's still splayed out on the ground, gods bless him. “You have to be naked to cast spells on it. Is that it?”

He watches his sister fly above him, arrow notched and ready; sees his friends, clustered around the shattered bit of wall Keyleth must have punched through: takes it in, savours it all. As if on cue, guards starting spilling through, Percy on accompaniment in the background yelling orders Vax isn’t quite able to make out over the chaos.

“I think that’s what it is!” Pike says, holding her shield over her body.

A weak smile makes its way to Vax's face. “That’s how we did it last time.”

It's then that he turns to Gilmore, when he's sure he isnt going to buckle at the sight: gorgeous, glorious Gilmore, who wastes no time in stepping up and wrapping his arms around him even with blood pouring down his face. Vax almosts collapses into his arms with laughter when he realises just how much of Gilmore's glory is pressed against him.

“Gods, am I glad you're alright," Gilmore breathes, voice hoarse and quiet and aching with affection.

“Wasn't expecting it to be my birthday,” Vax replies, wrapping his arms around him only to find his hands come back warm and sticky with blood. “Fucking hells, Shaun - ”

“Only a scratch,” he murmurs, and Vax pulls back so he can press their damp, sweaty, bloody foreheads together, holding him until their breath becomes one.

Of course, before this happens, Grog says, “Hey, not to break up a lovey-dovey whatsit or whatever, as touching as it is, but what the hell are you wearing?”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing,” Gilmore says cheerfully, although it's dampened a bit by how he tries to use Vax as a screen to block their view.

Grog's face crumples. "No, I meant - "

“Glorious Gilmore indeed,” Scanlan chortles.

“I know, that's what I said!” Grog says, irritation ramping up a notch, "But I was _tryna_ ask - "

“Oh, give the man a robe, would you?” Vex cuts in, delicately landing on the ground nearby. "No offence, Gilmore, but there's only one twin here who wants to see your dangly bits."

"None taken," Gilmore replies, catching the robe Grog tosses his way. "Believe me when I say the feeling's mutual. Sort of."

"Is no one going to ask Vax what the hell he's wearing?" Grog blusters, looking around like he’s surrounded by a bunch of idiots.

"The beading on is gorgeous," Keyleth says, eyes brimming with curiosity as she takes a step closer.

Gilmore frowns as he eases on the robe, a faint white light shining around him from Pike casting a healing spell so the fabric won't stick to his open wound. A strange pressure builds up beneath Vax's jaw as he realises just how much blood there is on the man. It's smeared into his hair and goatee, across his forehead, splattered across his arms and chest - then how much blood there is on _him,_ how much is still leaking from the gash in his stomach: how she - he - it - the robe was blue. It was blue, he was sure of it. Now more of it is brown than anything else. His gaze snaps from Keyleth, to Pike, to Grog, to Vex. They surround him, suffocating, until he wants to scrabble at the non-existent rope being tied tighter and tighter around his throat.

“I don’t really want to wear this,” he says. “I’m a little confused right now. I think I need to - ”

Now, Vax is a half-elf who has experienced a shit-ton of pain.

He's been burnt by lava, bitten by vampires, punched in the face by Grog, set on fire, stabbed in the gut, flicked in the balls by Grog, and don't get him started the three dragon fights he's been in in the last year and a half. He'd like to say his pain threshold was pretty high, but this motherfucking _hurts_. What kind of asshole makes a robe that makes it feel like your skin is being ripped off? The more he tries to rip it off, the more it pulls the breath out of his lungs, sapping the strength from his body until someone yanks his hands away. Gilmore has caught him by his wrists, pulling them away until they're pressed into his chest. Vax braces himself against him, head spinning like a motherfucker, and when Gilmore releases his wrists he presses his hands over his heart.

"My skin," he says, barely able to get the words out through the haze in his brain. "It feels like it's being peeled off my flesh."

Gilmore passes a hand over Vax, his eyes flickering with arcane sparks before they grow dark and stormy. "This is a Robe of Flaying."

Vax shakes his head, the pressure beneath his jaw building and building and building. "Can you - "

"I can certainly try," Gilmore replies, and his eyes flicker again. "Fuck. No, no, don't even try to remove it, it didn't - "

"Would a bit of inspiration help there, Shaun?" Scanlan says from where he's still on the floor.

"Yes, it might."

Gilmore does not break his gaze as he replies, the lines around his eyes deep-set with worry. Vax can still feel his heart beating in his chest, quicker than it should.

"Alright, er…" Scanlan pauses, then starts clicking out a rhyme as he sings. "He’s Shaun Gilmore, _(_ _he’s Shaun Gilmore_ _)_ ; he’s Shaun Gilmore, _(h_ _e’s Shaun Gilmore_ _)_ , he is a merchant and a friend we all adore! Keep it in mind, he's one of a kind! Oh, life's never a bore with Shaun Gilmore!"

"Scanlan, what the hell is - _oh._ "

Gilmore's eyes flicker for a third time, and Vax's skin positively thrums with energy from the top of his spine and down to his misshapen pinky toe. Gilmore's hands move to the robe but Vax pushes them gently away. There’s a collective caught breath, then a sign of relief, as he peels off the robe, slowly and then all at once. Never before has Vax so cherished the cold air of Whitestone stinging his skin. Gilmore catches it before it can fall to the floor and crumple at their feet. Scanlan immediately starts asking whether the robe is worth anything, which Vax doesn't give a damn about, and Vex starts nagging Grog to give him a robe so he can cover himself, which he doesn't give a damn about, either.

"We look almost _exactly_ the same - ”

“I don’t have any dangly bits, I’m sorry to tell you - "

“Minus that one thing, we are so close."

His face almost hurts he's smiling so much, tipping his head back to see the stars and let the cold night breeze play with his hair. He's here, gods dammit, he's here and he's loved and he's _alive_. Truly, is there any better feeling than that?

“Three things,” Scanlan adds, the bastard. "None of them cubes."

“There’s a few,” Gilmore agrees, and winks when Vax directs the smile at him, instead.

‘Give him a fancy robe, Grog,” Vex says, and Grog hums in that way he does when he's very dedicated to pretending he's taking something seriously. Even that sounds like music to his ears. “Grog! For my sake?”

“No, I literally don't have any, I gave the last one to Gilmore,” Grog says.

“What, you gave it to Gilmore?” Vex says. “Why did you - “

“What, you expect him to not sleep next to me naked?” Vax says, and shrieks when Grog smacks him on the arse with yet another damn robe, the lying bastard.

"You deserve that, you abso-fucking- _lutely_ deserved that," Vex snaps as Vax dodges another swipe, the scene punching a laugh from Gilmore, bright and booming.

"Gilmore, I'll take a guess and say you don't want the magical robe that tried to flay your boyfriend," Scanlan says, who's still chilling on the floor.

Vex mouths ' _boyfriend?'_ at him. Vax somehow manages to both flip her off and dodge another smack of the robe whilst simultaneously trying to catch it _and_ ignore what Gilmore's reaction to the word may or may not have been, all at the same time. Apparently, almost dying gives you really good reflexes.

"Good gods, no," is what Gilmore does say. "Even if it hadn't been used against Vax'ildan, this takes the skin off of its wearer! I don't want that in my repertoire! I think I'll stick to above-the-board items, thank you very much."

"Would it hurt Vax if we destroy it?" says Pike, who must've gained a robe at some point whilst Vax was slightly distracted by trying not to die.

"No, the enchantment has been broken, I've made sure of that," Gilmore replies. His eyes flick to Vax. "Have to say, wasn't aware it was my birthday as well."

"Hey, I have a question," Keyleth says. "What made you want to put on a cursed robe to begin with?'

“Yeah, I’d quite like to know what the _fuck_ that thing was,” Vex adds.

That stops his laughter. Any burst of happiness inside him is merely a burst, the warmth in his chest growing ice cold, the rope returning back around his neck as his eyes fall on Keyleth once again. Don’t they always? He’s been looking at her for years. Vax has no idea how he could ever mistake the rakshasa for the real thing, that snarling sneering creature for one of such goodness and hope. She stands there, bathed in moonlight, and there's something so unbearably _Keyleth_ about her, so much so that it hurts to look at her. And yet there's still that same worry around her mouth, the same sadness in her eyes.

"I think I'll take that robe, now," Grog," Vax says quietly.

He knows that, in the long term, it'll hurt far worse to look away now.

Grog hands him the robe in silence: he might be a numskull at the best of times but, gods, if his emotional maturity isn't up there with the wisest of them. They all fall quiet but for the sounds of the guards in the distance, the fall of Percy's feet on the stone as he joins them once again, his face clouded as it had never been before Vax had heard the name _Briarwood_.

"Vax?"

He hopes his eyes tell her everything he wants to say.

"“I think we might need to have a discussion with Vanessa at some point for not alerting us to the fact that this is an ongoing contract," Vax says. "Kiki, he came to me disguised as you."

One day, he hopes he might even know what it is he wants to say.

Within a breath, Vex has an arrow out and aimed right at the pale expanse of her throat. Keyleth's eyes widen, face crumpling in panic and distress, raising her hands as if mere flesh could stop the strike of her sister’s arrow.

“No, no, no, it's me, it's Keyleth, I swear! This is real Keyleth! Real Keyleth!”

“Vax, ask her a question that only Keyleth would know the answer to,” Scanlan pipes up.

“What did I tell you under the Sun Tree?” Vax asks. “After we freed Whitestone, what did I tell you?”

Tears are forming at the corners of her eyes but her gaze never breaks. "That you would wait for me."

The words are quiet and they are heavy and they are true. With the echo of the stone surrounding them, they fall on all ears. His sister lowers her bow although she keeps it notched, her eyes flicking between them and the man who has fallen still beside him.

“Yeah, that’s Keyleth,” Vax says. “He came to me disguised as you, told me he wanted to talk, and gave me the robe. Why wouldn’t I take it? We all know  - I would trust Keyleth with my life, you all know this. We went for a stroll and then he turned into whatever he is and then he stabbed me in the gut.”

"Wait, Keyleth gave you the robe?" Pike says. "I - I'm  _so_ confused right now."

“He was disguised as me,” Keyleth says. “The rakshasa is a skinchanger, he can shape-change and teleport and all sorts of shifty things. He was our contract for the Slayer's Take - Vax and I watched him die.” She takes a step towards him, holding up a hand gingerly. “Can I?”

“Of course,” Vax says. “I would trust you with my life. None of this changes that.”

Her face wrinkles with determination as her fingers sparkle with magic and she lays gentle hands on his shoulder. The sensation of his skin knitting itself back together will never not be peculiar, but not nearly as strange as standing between two people who love him, unsure as to whom he loves back.

"Thank you."

"I'm glad you're alright," she says, and any words he may have catch in his throat.

Fortunately, before Vax has a chance to spiral too deep into awkward, obvious, overwhelming regret, Gilmore says: "A drink, perhaps? I, for one, could do with some very heavy alcohol."

"We should - Gilmore, do you know where Allura is? " Keyleth asks, taking a small step back. "If they were after us and after you - "

"They may have only been after me because I was... sleeping in the castle as well."

“Oh, oh, is _the castle_ a euphemism for my brother?” Vex cuts in: then, horror dawning on her face, “Oh, _shit_ , Zahra. Kashaw.”

“All of them,” Keyleth says. “We need to make sure that everyone on the Council is okay.”

"That sounds like a plan," Vex says, as false as it is bright. "Keyleth, darling, why don't you come with me to find Kashaw?"

Vax watches them retreat back through the shattered wall, arms linked, until they disappear from sight and then some. Everyone else seems to have the same idea: Percy following soon after to yell more orders after giving him a pointed look, and Grog scooping both the gnomes up to carry them inside until it's only Vax and Gilmore left outside in the chill.

"Is that the same - "

"The same Kashaw, yeah," Vax says, turning back to Gilmore, and frowning when he sees how tightly he has his robe wrapped around him. "Are you  _cold_?"

"Oh, fucking _freezing_ ," Gilmore says, like he's been wanting to say it for hours.  

 ***

The castle is in utter chaos when they reenter through the shattered wall. All the guards, who would have been so useful when he was quite literally getting his guts ripped out, have come out of the woodwork, swarming the halls and posted outside their doors. He and Gilmore stay far, far away from any of the touchier topics as they make their way back to his room, Vax far too delighted to be alive and Gilmore far too relieved that they’ve both survived this to stray into anything too serious. It's Gilmore who does most of the talking, commenting on bits of the castle he hasn't seen before and complaining about everything and anything and anyone. He's particularly adverse to the chill of the castle, and how their fancy robes do little to keep out the cold. Gilmore loves to complain, he's found out in recent weeks, cheerfully and loudly and with as much gusto as he does everything else. Vax is more than happy to listen; he’s more than happy to do anything right now that isn’t battling dragons or cat demons or his own mortality. Gods, he even ends up making his stomach hurt with laughter when Gilmore, so uncharacteristically sheepish, shows him the current state of their room.

“Only a little angry, huh?”

“Less angry than Percy will be when we have to ask for another room, I promise you that.”

They manage to salvage most of their clothes, although Gilmore isn’t quite able to magic away the bloodstains from his shoes and the bedsheets are completely fucked beyond belief. Vax is crouched down by the body, poking through the armour with one of his knives, when he hears an inquisitive noise from behind him. When he turns, it’s to see Gilmore, half-dressed, holding his armour and looking at it as if for the first time; running his fingers over the hide for reasons other than to wish away the blood.

“You know, I don’t think you’ve told me where you got this from.” His voice is light, but under the joviality runs a river of worry and doubt. “I’d be very interested in hearing that tale.”

“Shaun,” Vax says, quiet, because if he isn’t ready for this conversation now he never will be. “You know everything about everything.”

“I wouldn’t say I know everything about everything,” Gilmore stutters, and Vax truly does love how easily flustered he can make the man. “Between Allura and I, I’m pretty sure we know everything, but she more than I.” His eyes flicker back down to the armour. “I certainly don’t know everything about you.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t told you about this armour yet, but - ”

“Oh, don’t apologise, what have you got to apologise for?” Gilmore scoffs. “It’s only my unsatiated curiosity that has me asking about - oh, except for going on romantic midnight walks without me. That you can definitely apologise for.”

“No more midnight walks without you, I promise,” Vax says, and is rewarded with an uneasy grin. “This armour, we found it in the tomb. It was part of the trap that - I’ve told you all about that. I kind of understand it. Can you tell me anything about it? You’ve seen me in it since then, obviously, I just. Hadn’t thought to ask about it since then.”

Gilmore passes him the armour with a smirk. “Well, you’ve had quite a bit on your mind since then, and I haven’t been so focused on the armour so much as what was underneath it. Normally it would be the other way around, but for once I can’t _wait_ to see you dress.”

Vax rolls his eyes but complys, taking the goddamn five minutes it takes to put the goddamn thing on. Gilmore uses that time wisely, walking around him and looking the armour up and down with keen and knowing eyes. He also looks _him_ up and down a little bit, not bothering to try to hide it in the slightest, but mostly at the armour. Vax watches him with just as much interest as his eyes flicker with arcane energy, the power to know all he can about an object just by waving a hand.

“This is a powerful Vestige, my friend. This has existed for quite some time, and you’ve - well," Gilmore huffs. “There’s certainly a bit of dark divine energy around it. It looks like it has the capability to resist most elements when given the instruction, it safeguards the life of the bearer, and it looks like there’s some sort of a - tell you what.”

He darts in and presses a brief, fierce kiss to Vax’s mouth before grabbing his hand. “Follow me.”

Gillmore refuses to say another word the entire walk down through the restless castle which only gets more and more frantic the closer they get to the front doors. The cause of this turns out to be Kima standing in the sitting room with a maul in one hand and the corpse of another assassin in the other, head caved in and dripping blood onto the stonework - _not_ onto the carpets, as both the de Rolos are quick to prevent. Allura is with her, unsurprisingly, and Vax watches as she and Gilmore have an odd, silent, split-second conversation before he pats down his robe and sighs when his hands come up short. Vax stays by his side the entire time: through talk of rakshaka, of Whitestone, of Hells, until the curiosity overcomes him and he can hardly stand it. The man contains so much knowledge and so many secrets within his blood, within whatever magic dances in his veins, and rarely has he seen delight dance in his eyes as it had upstairs.

"Hey,” Vax murmurs. He leans over a little so hopefully only Gilmore can hear but it’s a hope beyond hopes, given his friends. “I’m still down if you are.”

Gilmore smirks back at him with a spark in his eyes that definitely isn’t arcane in nature. “When you speak so sweet as that, how can I say no?”

Vax stands again, holding out a hand so he can pull Gilmore to his feet. He knows how it must look to everyone, which just makes it all the funnier.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Scanlan yells after them as Gilmore drags him to the front door. “Wait, where are they going?”

“Wow, she really didn’t half-ass it, did she,” Gilmore says mildly as they step over the crimson smear that not only leads out the door but down the footpath of the castle for as far as the eye can see.

They split away from the trail of blood as Gilmore leads him to the edge of the sheer cliffs and the cleaved mountain on which the castle is built. Gilmore walks up to the very edge but Vax holds back, all too aware of what happened the last time someone who loves him brought him so close to the edge.

"You can ask me a question, if you like," Gilmore says, his hand held out without any judgement. "Something only I would know."

"How do I kiss you?" he asks, voice thick in his throat.

"Like you're going to die," Gilmore says simply. "Do you trust me?”

“I do."

As soon as he takes his hand, there is no hand to hold. The last thing he feels before there's only sound and air and stomach-churning betrayal is Gilmore's hand steady on his back. His heart falls faster than his body, twisting and turning in the buffeting ocean air, his mind working the fastest of them all. Instinctively he looks up at the disappearing cliff edge, as if catching one last glimpse of Gilmore would make it all stop and he would be safe. And then it does. And then he is. Giant raven wings spill out the back of his armour, as black and as glorious as the night. Within seconds he goes from plummeting into the unforgiving waters surrounding Whitestone, his last thoughts on Shaun Gilmore, to swooping over the forests surrounding Whitestone, his thoughts only on Shaun Gilmore. He doubles back, flying up that same cliff, and swoops straight down towards the beaming man, who looks a little bit scared when Vax flies straight towards him and sounds a little more so when he sweeps him off his feet and up into the sky.

“You fucking brilliant bastard!” he yells with a passion greater than the howling winds, the crash of the ocean, the flap of his immense wings. “Thank you! _Thank you._ ”

Vax floats them back down, capturing his lips in a searing kiss just before their feet hit the ground. Gilmore freezes in his arms for a moment, knowing that all their friends are watching, but then his arms go from clinging desperately to holding him close and warm and solid. The wings envelop them both, curling around them and hiding them from the rest of the world, as if they agree with him. He can have this. He's allowed. He can kiss him like a man returning home from war even if the war’s still ongoing. He can ignore it all - the hoots and hollers from Grog and Scanlan; can ignore the “Oh, _finally_ ,” from Percy, the cheers from Vex and Pike, and the surprised sound from Keyleth - for just a moment. As much as it warms his heart, as much as it might hurt. 

With one last, gentle kiss, Vax breaks apart just enough to press their foreheads together once again, holding him until their breath becomes one and his face hurts with smiling.

“Sorry."

Gilmore laughs, a little nervous, but his smile is wide and wonderful. “No, it’s all right. I would have been fine.”

Tears have formed at the corners of his eyes. Under the cover of the wings, Vax wipes them away, brushing their noses together and kissing him once again.

“I am yours,” he says, and the truth of it swells in his chest. “Whatever you need, I am yours. As much as I can give you."

“And I am yours, my dear Vax'ildan,” Gilmore says. “Never forget that.”

When Vax finally releases him, the wings scatter into black feathers in the wind and disappear. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E58 Part 2 of 5.

_prelude_

_"Shaun, it's Vax. Umbraysl dead. Westruun saved. All are well. Scouting out shop locations for you. Will be back soon, maybe a week. Yours, Vax."_

_"Pike! Good to hear your voice. Delighted dragon dead and all okay. Whitestone unaffected. Greatly anticipating your return. Thank you, Vax. Yours, Shaun."_

 chapter 6 

Vax is hopeful when they go to bed that night. Percy is quick to tell them of another room within the castle they can use, and quicker to tell them to spare some consideration for the bedframe, as the woodwork is quite old. Not that they're in any state, physical or emotional, to anything more than strip off their fancy robes and collapse into bed, Vax on his back and Gilmore on his stomach to avoid lying on their respective wounds. They're not close enough to touch but close enough to savour the warmth radiating from the other's body, too tired to even fuss over each other, skin pink and healing from Pike and Keyleth's touch alike. Yet Vax has hope still. Hope that his friendship with Keyleth might not be splintered beyond repair. Hope that maybe this thing with Gilmore is something he could be good at. Hope that he still wants to live, after all of it, after everything.

So he's hopeful, and in need of a good night's sleep, but life had other ideas for him. Doesn't it always? As soon as his eyelids droop, nightmare after nightmare after nightmare plague him, perpetual and petrifying. Gilmore snores quietly by his side but sleep only scorns him. Keyleth, in his dreams, plunging the blade into his stomach. Keyleth, in his arms, ripping his throat out with her teeth. Keyleth, in his bed, whispering the words revolving around his head:

_You told me you would wait for me. You told me you would wait for me. You told me you would wait for me._

All this, and worse, taunt and torment him; no amount of rest gives him relief. He lies, trembling, as the imagery runs through his mind again and again, a perpetual cold sweat dampening his brow. He practically falls over himself with apologies when his torments cause Gilmore to stir but, upon placing a gentle hand on his forehead, the man gently shushes him and, gods bless the bastard, remains as awake as he does throughout the rest of the night. Like a mother to a child, like a brother to a sister, like a lover to a beloved, Gilmore is a tired and tireless source of comfort, only disappearing to fetch damp cloths to wipe his brow, and to change the blankets when he yet again sweats through the sheets.

Through the grief and torment, a memory swims to the forefront of his mind of the night before the dragons came: seeing Keyleth vomiting in the side street of that strange little pub and knowing that he loved her still. He wonders if Gilmore is thinking much the same; that he loves him, even when night becomes day and magiquing away various bodily fluids becomes magiquing away even more bodily fluids. 

“No, don’t worry, don’t worry,” he keeps on saying, again and again and again, with every flick of his hand. “This is half the reason I learned the spell in the first place.” 

"This is still not ideal," Vax mutters, arm slung over his face to shade his eyes.

Even that causes him pain, the simplicity of the sun. He lies curled away from the light shining through the castle windows of the second bedroom arranged for them, Gilmore curled up next to him with soothing words and strange songs from his childhood that Vax does not recognise. 

"I have been in half a dozen relationships, half of which have been with adventurers as flighty and foolhardy as you," Gilmore says, so fond it makes his heart ache. "Believe me when I say this is not the first time I have helped a partner whilst he was not feeling his best. Sure, this is not ideal, but," he shrugs, "what else am I to do? I mean, if you'd prefer I not be - " 

"No, no," Vax cuts in. "I wouldn't prefer you not - I'd never - I'd just prefer to not be feeling like absolute crap."

Gilmore laughs even as he wipes cool his forehead once again. "Now that I can understand."

Vax hopes, when he blinks awake again, that several hours might've passed, but no such luck. From what he can tell from the paining sun and the shadows it casts, not even minutes have passed. Gilmore sighs.

"I'd hoped this would've passed in the night and broken by sunrise. Seems those hopes were much too high." There's a shifting of weight on the bed as Gilmore stands, saying, "Try to sleep a little longer, my dear. I'll be back shortly."

"What, why?" Vax says, pushing himself upright with some difficulty as Gilmore begins to collect robes from around the room, struggling to keep his eyes open when his body craves the sleep that his mind will not permit. "Where are you going?"

"Just to find Allura," Gilmore reassures him. "This is a little out of my pay-grade, I'm afraid, and I'm hoping she'll shine some light on the situation."

"Send someone else," Vax says. "Stay a little longer. Send someone else."

Gilmore smiles, and the tender look in his eye is the greatest relief Vax has received since the fever struck. "I'll go find your sister, how about that? I'll go find your sister, and then I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Alright," Vax says, collapsing back into the bed. "Alright. Alright."

Gilmore brushes his hair out of his eyes one more time, smoothing it down past his ears as a replacement for kissing his fever-damp forehead, before he departs, closing the door quietly behind him. Vax sleeps feverishly on until he is woken by his sister calling his name quietly from the door.

"Brother? Sorry. I don’t mean to disturb you when I know you're ill. Can I come in?"

Vax waves a hand weakly at the door which she seems to take as permission, closing the door behind her and stepping over his boots on her way over to him.

"God, you really do look awful."

"I don't feel very well."

"Yes, your boyfriend told me as much," Vex says dryly, taking a seat at the end of the bed. "You smell better."

Vax sighs, staring up at the ceiling as if it'd send him to sleep or her away. "I’m just going to ignore that. Where is he?"

"Gone downstairs. Wanted to get you some broth." Out of the corner of his eye, he can see his sister tilt her head, looking at him appraisingly. "So he _is_ your boyfriend, then?"

Shit.

"I don't know," he replies, not so convinced he'll be able to bullshit his way out of this one, which is bullshit in and of itself when he himself has absolutely no idea where they stand with each other. "Boyfriend seems a little childish, doesn't it?"

"If you were with Keyleth, you'd call yourself her boyfriend."

Vax snorts. "Keyleth's a decade and a half younger than Gilmore.'

"Are you saying that Keyleth is childish, that you would want to be Keyleth's boyfriend, or that Gilmore's not your boyfriend?" Vex says, voice spiky. Yeah, he probably deserves that. "Because, to be perfectly honest, I'm getting rather confused here." 

"What's there to be confused about?" Vax says, as convinced as he always is that he can bullshit to his sister and get away with it. One day, it will work, and he’s not sure if he’s wanting or dreading that day to approach. "Gilmore and I have been sweet on each other for months, you know that."

"You've barely seen Gilmore for a month," Vex fires back. "Literally haven't clapped eyes on him since the attack on Emon, and suddenly you're spending the night with him, calling him your boyfriend - "

"I have _never_ called him my - "

"And snogging him for all of Whitestone to see!"

"He almost died, Vex," he says, voice breaking on the words. When his eyes flutter close, it’s now Gilmore in his arms, wounded weak. His throat becomes thick with the ghost of that heavy, helpless rage, a drop in the ocean to what he feels for him now. "I almost died; _we_ all almost died. So, so many times. Is is that hard to believe that that might've, I don't know, sped things up a bit?" 

"The last time something sped things up a bit, you told Keyleth you were in love with her," Vex says icily. "And you kissed her, but I didn't see you sneaking her into your bedroom then.”

Keyleth, under the Sun Tree, sad smile twisting as she yanks her hand from his only to rip his heart straight from his chest. What he feels for her now, dear friend, he does not know. 

"So what is it? Are you still in love with her?"

"I don't know."

"You're in love with Gilmore, then."

"I don't know."

"How can you _not_ know?"

“I don’t know!” Vax says for what seems like the millionth time tonight. “How am I supposed to know? As you said I've barely seen him for a month."

"But you've seen Keyleth," Vex fires back, as sharp and swift as any arrow. "You've seen Keyleth almost every single day, so how can you _not_ know if you're in love with her?"

"I don't know! What does it matter, anyway?" Vax says, anger and exhaustion and pain bubbling under his skin even as he lies there and takes it. "What does it matter whether I'm in love with her or not?"

"Is it so hard to believe that I might be concerned?"

"About who?"

"About Keyleth, you idiot!”

She’s leaning all the way forward, now, as close to yelling in his face she can be whilst still sitting prim and proper at the end of his bed. She always is a little more refined when in the castle, although she never loses her ferocity. He can see his anger reflected in her eyes, although it dims a little as she leans back, averting gaze as she so often does when she catches her temper. She’s done it ever since they were children, since they were very small. Probably one of the first lessons they ever learnt from their father, as if he were not half the cause of it to begin with. 

 "Well, and you and Shaun, as well,” she adds, so reluctant in her love. “I'm concerned about all three of you. But the reason I'm so concerned is because you're being an absolute dick about the whole thing."

Vax doesn't reply to that, only curls deeper into the blankets, trembling. He barely has the energy to wipe his own forehead, never mind argue with his sister, what else is he supposed to do?

"You have seen him since the attack on Emon, haven't you," Vex says. It's not a question. "This isn't the first night you've spent with him. You're too familiar with each other."

Vax doesn't say anything.

"When was it? Was it before the attack on Emon?" 

What is there for him to say? 

"No, it can't have been, because then it would've had to have been before Whitestone," she continues thoughtfully. "And somehow I doubt even you would've kissed Keyleth then." 

That stings enough for him to snipe back, "Your high opinion of me is really appreciated."

"Shut up," she snaps. "After the attack on Emon, then."

When he doesn't answer once more she smacks the blanket above his calf. It doesn't really hurt, muffled by the blankets, but it's the force that counts. "You fuck! Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why didn't you answer the door?"

Her hair is escaping from the hasty horsetail she tied it into after assassins struck her as she slept. The assassins that were here because of him: the assassins that tried to kill her, because of him: the assassins who hurt her because of him. The anger that swelled in his gut had pushed him upright, has him snapping at his sister, his dear sister who deserves none of this. Not the dragons, not the death, not him. So much. So, so much she deserves, he feels small and insignificant in the wake of his love for her, sometimes. Now, he only feels small in the face of the guilt that beats like a drum, the wish for all this to go away, for nothing but his sister to smile and Gilmore to be back by his side, crooning songs from his childhood.

"Afterwards? After - "

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," his sweet sister says, his sweet sister who has nothing to apologise for. "I'm sorry."

"Why are you here, Vex'ahlia?" he says, hating the way his voice sounds, cracking and pathetic. "Why couldn't you have just gone to get Allura like he asked?"

"I'm here because I wanted to apologise," Vex says, voice grief-steady. "I just wanted to say sorry for being mad at you for being able to fly, because I’m actually really impressed and proud of you, and I’m glad you’re not dead."

"I'm glad you're not dead, either," Vax says. "Really glad."

"Yeah," Vex says, smile watery. "But I'm not impressed about what a dick you're being."

"Trust me, no one feels worse about how I'm stringing them along than I do," Vax says. "No one feels worse, in general, than I do."

"Gilmore wasn't looking particularly good either," she replies, as shrewd as ever. "Has he been with you all night?"

"He has."

"Hm.” A smile is twitching at the corners of her mouth. “He's a good man, Gilmore."

"He is," Vax says, smiling until she does too, his amaranthine mirror image.

"I'll go find Allura."

"Thank you."

"As an apology for being a dick last night."

"Thank you."

Her smile, brighter and brighter by the moment, shifts again into a scowl as she points a chiding finger at him, and he loves her. Oh, how he loves her. 

"But promise me you'll talk to Keyleth."

"I will. I will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are forever lovely and appreciated.
> 
> Next chapter should be up in November.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E58 Part 3 of 5.
> 
> Long hiatus as what was Ch. 7 is now Ch. 8 and sometimes it takes a month to write 5000 words even if you have the main frame for it wahey!

chapter 7 

Vax does not move for a very long time after that.

The guilt churns within him, as rotten as the plague coursing through his veins. Gods, he had all but forgotten, caught up in his misery and his malady and the warmth of Gilmore by his side: caught up, as always, in his own selfish, sickening bullshit. Forgotten the gentle press of her fingers against his wound on the very first day that they met, forgotten the softness of her hand in his in the graveyards of Whitestone, forgotten how quickly she had yanked it away that fateful afternoon underneath the Sun Tree. Hope? What hope? What hope could he have had that his friendship with Keyleth might not be splintered beyond repair when she can hardly bear to speak to him? One moment, she had been watching from the door frame, her slender arms crossed across her chest against the chill of the night, clad in the same, silvery nightgown the rakshasa had copied and contaminated: the next, she had slid into the shadows and Vax could not have exchanged a word with her even if he’d wanted to. He wants to. Gods, he wants to. His sister was right, is the thing, as she so often is. Not only does he need to speak to her, not only does she not deserve this, any of this, but Gilmore is also just as undeserving. What hope could he have that this thing with Gilmore is something he could be good at, when he slipped into his bed and into his heart when he was in love with someone else? 

He had told him he was his.

Gilmore does not deserve this, any of this, but the fury in his sister’s eyes is what Vax so desperately deserved. 

Maybe in another life, if they get another life, he was not so great a fool, not so weak a coward. Maybe in that life, where there still was no third path to take but there were still three hearts to break, he had told him. He had swept him off his feet, and let him down gently, and given him the truth that Gilmore deserved. But that life slipped through his fingers the moment he knocked on his door that night of heavy, helpless rage, when one chasm was crossed and another dehisced. All he has in this life is his hopes, and the sorry, selfish guilt in his heart. He stirs weakly, his stomach churning, afraid he was going to end up jack-knifed on the bed again, retching up his sorrows, when his eyes catch something glinting on the chest of his armour, draped on the bedside table. 

Gilmore had spent many breaths trying to coax him out of those dappled leathers, citing the guards posted by the dozen at the door, the dagger under Vax’s pillow, and the literal fire he could shoot out of the tips of his fingers at a moment’s notice as an assurance that there wouldn't be a repeat incidence. Only when the disease had begun to truly strike did Vax allow him to peel it off from where it'd begun to stick to his sweating, shivering skin. It takes him a second, brain foggy with fever, to clock the source: the brooch that  had gifted him before patting him firmly on the shoulder and telling him he knew what he had to do if he knew what was good for him. Cryptic, hypocritical bastard. The jewelled eyes of the raven skull glitter in the mid-morning light like they are watching him, like they are telling him, _no: that is not nearly all you have._

To tell her, that’s what he has. To tell her, and to live. That’s what he can cling too, now, above all the rest: that he wants to live, for as long as the fates will give him, and that he wants to be her friend, as much as she will give him.

Next to the armour, several loud and gaudy rings sit quiet and waiting. Vax smiles. That, too. He has that, too, as much as he will give him. 

He tries to recall the tunes that Gilmore had been humming to him earlier, but he never had much of an ear for music. His feeble attempts feel as out of tune as the rest of him. Sweat beads on his forehead with no warm hand to wipe them away, his lips cracked and dry from dehydration. There's a moment where he almost makes to leave, pushing himself up on shaking hands, until he remembers that Gilmore had told him he'd be back as soon as possible. That Gilmore had promised he'd be back as soon as possible.  He can trust the man on that, even if Vax himself has stretched his own trust to the very limit. He collapses back down into the sheets and almost - not quite, but almost - prays for rain.

When Gilmore returns, he's not accompanied by the waft of broth cooked up by the Whitestone kitchens, nor even the scent of the perfume that would normally trail around after him. Only from absence of one does Vax realise that the other is missing: the sweet spice of his shop, of his very self, as much Gilmore as the gaudy rings and the braided goatee and the twinkle in his eye. He hadn't smelt it for weeks but for the occasional dream. All his perfumes, Vax realises, had been left to crack and blister in Emon. He wonders of it, that unique smell. He is not versed in the art of perfumes - that's the forte of Scanlan, his sister, and, on occasion, Percival - but he had a nose enough to know he'd smelt similar on few others amongst the merchant circles of Emon. Perhaps it was from his homeland, Vax thinks, along with the strange language Gilmore only speaks under great pain or within great pleasure.

Vax stirs once more to face the door, lamenting for the strength that has been siphoned from every sinew in his muscles. Unlike Vax, Gilmore doesn't need to resort to putting the breakfast tray on the floor to get through the door. He can hold the tray with one hand and the doorknob with the other because, also unlike Vax, he has a third, magical hand to hold the other side of the tray for him, the cheat. The spellcasting bastard looks smug to bits about it until the arcane hand flickers out of existence and the tray almost tips, Gilmore grabbing the other side with his real, ring-adorned hand just in time. No - only one ring, a simple, bronze thing, oddly plain compared to its compatriots that Gilmore had initially shucked off in a hurry the night before, then carried over carefully upon switching rooms.

Gilmore glances toward the bed post-blunder, as if in the hope that it’s occupant would still be asleep and his slip-up would have gone unnoticed. Vax pulls together just enough energy to lift up his hand and wiggle his fingers at him, smile hidden amongst the covers.

"Not a word." 

The smile just grows. Gods, he has this: he’s allowed this, as much as Gilmore will give him, for as long as he will give it. "Didn't say anything." 

“Hmm,” is Gilmore’s only response, resonant and rich and warm.

Even the thought of food has Vax’s stomach squirming and churning again, so he nuzzles back into the pillow, closing his eyes. That’s what he tells himself, at least, clinging a little tighter to his pillow as Gilmore flits around the room.  "I was wondering why you were taking so long."

"Darling, this place is an absolute _maze_ ,” Gilmore replies. He's making his way over to the bed, from what Vax can hear: the gentle clunk of the tray being set carefully down on the bedside table and the dip in the mattress only confirm it. "Took me gods know how long to find my way to the dining rooms and back."

"We went from there to here last night."

"Sufficient to say I was a little distracted last night." A moment passes, and then Vax feels Gilmore's gentle fingers brushing a strand of hair stuck to his sweaty forehead from out of his eyes: a moment, like Gilmore had hesitated to make the action. "How are you feeling?"

"Shitty," Vax replies, leaning into his touch as much as the guilt will let him. He’s allowed this. He’s allowed this, even if he does not deserve it. "Literally and figuratively, which means you've got really high expectations if you expect me to be eating anything right now."

"Oh, no, this is all for me," Gilmore says. "Well, the coffee is, gods know I need it. I've brought toast and water for you, if you can stomach anything." 

Vax shakes his head, even that small motion sending a throb of pain through his skull.

Gilmore sighs. Not at irritation at him, he knows that, but he cannot help but hear it, the exhaustion in every breath he takes. “Your sister's - "

"Yes, I know," Vax says. He curls up on the bed even tighter, pulling his knees close to his chest with shivering hands. "She came in here to give me a bollocking before she flew off to find Allura."

Gilmore hums again, that warm sound that Vax can feel in his shoulders, the back of his neck. His hand moves from his forehead and Vax misses it instantly, that little thing. There’s a rustle of fabric, like Gilmore is shifting to stand up, and his hand shoots out, without any conscious intervention, to grab the nearest available bit of him: the front of his robe, held as tightly as he can between his trembling fingers.

“Stay,” he mumbles, turning his face to one side to look up at him through bleary eyes. “Please. Stay.”

There's a moment where Vax thinks he's made a mistake, that he's asked for much too much, and then Gilmore lets out a small noise that Vax cannot parse and separates Vax’s hand from his robe, tangling their fingers together instead. Even the soft sheets are an irritant against his shivering skin, but Gilmore’s hand in his again is an immediate relief. There’s no unsurety now, no hesitance in his hands, and Vax finds that it’s the same in his heart. With a quiet sigh, he relaxes back into the mattress. He is sure of this, now. He is as sure of the hand in his as he has been of anything else.

"Sleep, my dear," Gilmore says. "Allura will be here before you know it."

***

“ - would say it’s lovely to see you,” is what Vax's ears catch when he drifts back into consciousness.  “But I’m just so envious of your hair.”

“I’m very glad to see you here,” he hears Allura reply. There’s a slight emphasis on the _you_ that Vax doesn’t quite parse until he drags his eyes back open. Even through half-closed lids he can see that Allura is watching them very shrewdly, eyes flicking between him and Gilmore with an awful sort of knowing, and Vax is struck by the godawful realisation that the person he’s been sleeping with has talked about him with his friends.

It probably would have been a subtle hint if Kima hadn't added, "Yeah, fucking finally."

"Yes, _thank_ you, Kima," Gilmore says.

His eyes are still heavy with worry, voice still light with that well-crafted levity that Vax is slowly, hour after  hour they spend together, growing to understand, finding the cracks in his smile which would be shattered in Vax’s own facade.  

Allura's own smile is slipping, replaced by a troubled concern as she looks him over. “You certainly don’t look well.”

The shift of the sunlight cascading over the bed suggests little time has passed. He feels none the better for what little sleep he's managed to catch, and highly doubts he looks it, either. 

"I’ve had bad dreams all night long," he tells her, pushing himself up on trembling arms. "I keep on reliving the moment from last night and I’ve got really bad… bathroom etiquette."

"That I can attest for," Gilmore adds as he helps him sit up.  

Vax tries to send him an annoyed look, in no mood for even his charming sarcasm, but his hands are so warm and forgiving on his back. He's too tired for to be annoyed, too tired to do anything but lean into his warmth: he misses those hands when Gilmore lets him go, shifting to a more respectable distance at the end of the bed so that Allura can step forward, shaking her delicate sleeves down her forearms. 

The examinations that follow feel endless. The first is of an arcane nature from Allura, fluttering her hands in the air above him with as much effect as when Gilmore had tried, muttering under his breath again and again throughout the night until Vax had batted his hands away and begged for peace and quiet. The next is from his own hand, pressing his fingers against his sweat-damp skin and looking pitifully up at the ceiling, the sweet divinity fizzling through his veins and then fizzling out entirely - 

“Do you pray to your god like that?” Gilmore asks Kima mildly.

“Ha, ha, very funny," Kima says, unfolding one arm to gesture roughly at the bed. “May I?”

"By all means," Gilmore replies, with the universal gesture of be my guest, and without any of the communication that Vax thinks is probably required in normal, healthy relationships in which neither party is putting their life on the line every other day.

Before Vax can say a word, Kima is scrambling onto the bed with all the grace of a determined sheepdog and straddling him with all the indication that Allura is a very lucky woman indeed. This third, impromptu examination is a far more physical kind, to no one's surprise: Kima pulling open his eyelids, yanking on his tongue, and, most horrifying of them all, yelling for Grog to help.

"You’re not going to slip me the digit, are you?" Vax manages to get out under the barrage of dubious medical attention.

"No," Grog replies, like that was the stupidest thing he's ever heard. "That's Gilmore's job."

All three of Kima's options prove as effective as the ministrations of her - girlfriend? best friend? partner? Vax hasn't a clue. Vax hasn't a clue about anything except for how much he wants to sleep. Allura's watching them very much the same way that Gilmore is: to the side, with an identical expression of warring mirth and concern on her face. Or  at least, _she's_ concerned. When Vax looks to Gilmore for help, as pitifully as he had done to the heavens, when Grog begins insisting on finding out how far his tongue really can stretch, he's just leaning back and grinning, the bastard.

"Her hair is better than yours," he says, once Grog lets go of his tongue.

"Oi," Gilmore says.

"It's true, hers is much nicer," Kima agrees, scooting back off his lap. Vax so wishes he was well enough to appreciate the faintest colour that the compliment brings to Allura's cheeks: all it makes him want to do now is retch again. "Should we fetch Pike? And Keyleth?"

In a surprising display of intuition for such a bonehead, Grog shoves the chamber pot underneath his face as Vax loses what must be last week's lunch at this rate, burning his face with embarrassment and the back of his throat with bile.

"There we go, buddy," Grog says, smacking more than patting his back. "Get it all out." 

"Yes,” Vex says carefully as Grog gives him a nice new bruise right where his wings would sprout. “I think fetching Keyleth would be a very good idea."

"Shall we fetch Percival, while we're at it?" Vax says, spitting what little saliva his mouth can produce into the pot. "Invite the whole of Whitestone into our bedroom? Thank you," he adds in an undertone as Gilmore leans over to wave away the vomit without a word. 

"Hey, I don't want this room to smell of puke any more than you do," Gilmore replies.

Vex rolls her eyes, flicking a hand between the two of them. "And people say _you're_ the dramatic one in the relationship.”

Gilmore's smile does not quite reach his eyes when he replies, "I didn't realise we were such a source of gossip." 

There was no hesitance in the man when he helped him to sit up, Vax's muscles atrophying before his very eyes, but something far more subtle is at play now. What remains unspoken snakes throughout the room, sliding their gazes away from each other even as his armour and Gilmore's rings lie together on his bedside table. Vex sends him another scathing look before she disappears down the hallway to fetch the rest of his party: Allura looks fit to follow, straightening her posture in what is the clearest form of discomfort that Vax can glean from the mage. Kima's eyes are narrowing, cogs slowly turning in her head as if trying to figure out if she should be giving Vax some new choice bruises, too. Thank the gods for Pike Trickfoot, he thinks. When there is no hesitance in his heart, there is no hesitance in her, either: clambering up onto the bed and pushing Kima aside as soon as she arrives at his well-travelled bedroom door. Her little fingers are quick and adept, jumping over his skin, checking for - what, Vax isn't quite sure. Lumps under his ears, darkened veins pulsing in his arms - whatever it is, or isn't, she finds no sign: only red marks and scrapes of teeth that hadn't been visible in the dark.

He thought he might've gotten away with it until Grog chortles, "Two little ladies on your bed? Aren’t you a lucky - ey, what’s that on your chest?"

Vax pulls his shirt back across his chest as soon as he can, the second that Pike sits back on her little bare feet with a frustrated sigh. From the unimpressed look on Vex's face - she always looks more like their father when she frowns like that, he thinks, but he will take that thought to his grave - and how tightly Gilmore has folded his arms, it’s not quick enough. 

All the hesitance in the world now lives in Keyleth: in how the three women he loves most in the world (distant memories of how his mother had taken care of him when he was sick float to the surface of his mind, but he pushes them away) had argued in the hall until Vex had burst in the door, saying: 

"Don't be stupid, of _course_ you're allowed - "

Keyleth had been standing shy behind her, peeking doe-eyed over her shoulder. "I don't want to intrude - "

"Not in the slightest," Vex had scoffed but, despite her greatest efforts, and Gilmore’s unobtrusive silence, Keyleth had remained by the door with Percy while Pike was examining him, discussing in quiet voices the brooch he had given Vax. 

Holding the skull in her slender fingers, her eyes are now bright with excitement despite the dark smudges beneath them, and Percy's face is warm with a compliment paid: lost in their own little world before his sister breaks them out of it. 

"We seem to be making quite a number on your bedrooms," Gilmore says idly when Vax retches again, waving away the vomit.

"Yes, quite," Percy agrees, wrinkling his nose. "Hey! I was going to look at that!"

Kima ends up shuffling to end of the bed near Vax’s feet, hilariously adorable in her heavy armour with her legs criss-cross applesauce like a child. Gilmore vacates the bed entirely, gracefully allowing Keyleth to sit down and leaving a lump in Vax's throat. She perches so close to the edge of the bed that Vax is surprised she doesn't slip right off. Gilmore stands to the side, leaning against the wall, quiet and watchful as Pike takes her hand, then his. Vax closes his eyes when the inevitable happens: when Keyleth takes his hand, so strange and familiar, in hers. All he can see is the back of his eyelids and the warmth of the glow as nature and the divine begin to channel through them, thrumming in their veins. It washes through him, over the darkness hooked onto his spine, washing it clean away. If only it could do the same with his guilt. Whatever kept that nightmare churning in his abdomen was dissipated and swept away, but still his life remains.

"The rakshasa…" he hears her murmur, hand still resting in his. He cannot bear to move, to think, to breathe, to break this spell - 

"Ah," his sister chimes in. "He was cursed. Grog - "

Keyleth doesn't quite yank her hand away, but it's a close thing. Vax curls his hand - no, his hand curls into a fist, he makes no such conscious move. The mattress shifts as she stands; there's a quiet pat-pat on the stone floor as Pike leaps off of the bed. Before, he had been fluctuating between a shivering chill running down his spine, and a hellish heat burning in his stomach: now he just feels a little cold, alone on a bed much too large for one. He opens his eyes, the great weight lifted from his weary lids, and finds Gilmore looking back at him with a relieved smile on his face.

"A curse?" Vax says as his sister and Grog begin to bicker, not bothering to listen when they all know who's going to win.

"What?" Gilmore says. "How was I supposed to know that?"

"You did say you didn't know everything about everything," Vax replies, and Gilmore's eyes follow his when he turns to the rest of his party.

Keyleth has retreated back to Percy already, caught up once again in conversation over the raven brooch. She had made it, he remembers that now.  Percy is holding his hands behind his back, rocking gently on the balls of his feet as they converse. How could he have ever thought that only three hearts would be affected? First Vex, pulling her away into the castle last night: now Percy, keeping her solaced by his side. How many? How many more conversations has Keyleth sought out with their friends, and they with her, all because he's been too much a coward to have one with her? Vax unclenches his fist, places it flat on his settled, if sore, stomach. The illness is gone, but his sick heart still remains. His head feels clearer, but his soul feels none the less tired, none the less lost. He knows what he has to do - has known for a long time, really - but he feels none the less ready to do it.

Before anyone can say another word, Vex is shoving Grog's mug at him, filled up with what Vax hopes but sincerely doubts is clear, cool water. 

"Drink this," she orders.

"All of it?" Vax says. He's struggling to keep the mug steady in his weakened grasp, the water sloshing around and spilling over the edges. "Are you sure this won’t make me throw up as well?"

"You’re very dehydrated, seriously," Vex says and, gods, he loves her. Loves how she can so quickly cut through the bullshit, all the emotional baggage he always carries with him, ever since they were children together.

Truly, there is not a world where the cards had played out this way and Vax had refused to speak to Keyleth. No matter how cruel, how heartless that Vax'ildan was, if such a Vax'ildan could ever exist. There is no other life in which he would do as his sister requested, not when she was so truly disappointed in him as she is now. Her eyes are heavy with it, and so Vax does what she says, and hides his shame in the mug of water. 

It's only when he starts to make an even greater fool of himself, gulping down the water he didn't realise he so desperately needed so quickly that most of it ends up down his chin, that Gilmore speaks up again, the bastard.

“I think that may be my cue to fetch some proper breakfast,” he announces, pushing himself off the wall. “It’s not every morning that I wake up in a castle, I may as well make the most of it - that is, of course, if that’s alright with you, Lord Percival?”

Percy blinks. “Oh, please, be my guest,” he replies as Grog yanks the mug back out of Vax’s hands. “We’ve got lots of food. Plenty of it, in fact.”

“Now, that’s what I like to hear,” Gilmore says, tightening his robe on way to the door. "Vex'ahlia, thank you for fetching Allura.”

Vex starts at that, her eyes softening as she looks up at him. "Of course, darling," she says, placing a hand on his forearm. "Not a problem at all.”

His smile is a little warmer as he places his own hand atop hers: Vax watches their eyes lock, a strange little conversation he alone should be able to understand, but he alone does not. Whatever said, they must agree on, as he removes his hand and she hers in one single movement, and Vax is struck by a second godawful realisation that the person he’s been sleeping with may have talked about him with his sister. 

“And Pike, Keyleth…” Gilmore adds when he's at the door, turning back to face the room. His smile does not waver: his words, for once, do, thick in his throat. “...stars, the both of you.”

He gives the doorframe a conciliatory pat before disappearing down the hallway, leaving them standing in silence. Strange to think that the last time this had happened, the last time that Vax watched Gilmore walk away and leave him with his party, Keyleth had been the one throwing up her guts. The water turns bitter in his mouth at the memory, as acrid-sharp as the bile that Gilmore had been wishing away again and again. How little he knew the man then, how little he knows him still. He would have bet his life that there would never be a conversation with his party that Gilmore would want to avoid: his party who had fought their way across town to find him, and yet - and yet.

When Vax looks away from his door to his party, all of them are staring at him, and Vax is struck by a third godawful realisation of what this looks like: Gilmore's day-robes hanging on the back of the door, the lovebites littered across his chest. What it looks like, and what they all know it is. If he'd been caught in this state with anyone else - gods, he has been, once or twice: in those first few months after he had first met Keyleth, trying to get over what had then been nothing more but a flight of fancy by getting under someone else, or even if he'd just gotten lucky at some random pub when he was young and merry. They'd all thoroughly enjoyed taking the piss out of him then, he hadn't heard the end of it for days afterwards, but now - now, all of them are staring. No, not staring. But it's the not-staring that makes the fact that they're all focused on him that much more obvious.

Percy is politely and pointedly averting his eyes as if it has been too long since he last reminded them that he's a noble and he wanted to make sure everyone still remembered. Kima is still stood on the bed, Allura’s hand on her shoulder, murmuring together in the way that lovers do. Grog is staring at him, but he's staring everyone: looking from person to person to person like a grumpy toddler or a little lost boy. When he catches Pike's eye, Vax's heart swells with the guilt that comes not from being judged, but because of the lack of judgement and how he does not deserve it. His sister he cannot bear to look at, and Keyleth - oh, Keyleth. She stands like caught in a holding spell, on the brink of breaking free and fleeing but not quite summing up the courage. He craves to do the same, to bolt into the hallway and find Gilmore, to crawl back into the sheets with him and pretend that the world doesn't exist - to do, in short, what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. 

The only piercing stare that is missing is Scanlan: he finds himself aching for his presence, bright and bold and three feet tall. There'd be some joke, some filthy innuendo, that he could make to break the tension and make them all laugh. Without him, he thinks, they are much too serious.

“What about me?” Grog says, shattering the porcelain silence, the mug comically small in his large goliath hands. “Why didn’t I get a thank you?”

Keyleth pulls on her sleeves. Allura pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. Percy coughs.

“Hey, Grog?” Vax asks, a little weakly, clutching onto the sheets. “Does that thing make mimosas?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It turns out that there are few idiomatic synonyms for "deer caught in headlights" that don't require electricity. I considered "goblin caught in a fireball" but it didn't quite fit.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Update due mid-Jan, I hope.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E58 Part 4 of 5.

_chapter 8_

“Gotta say,” Kima says. “Surprised that _that’s_ where your eyes are focused.”

“Huh?” 

Whitestone was looking particularly idyllic this early afternoon, so much so that Vax is surprised Percy hasn’t paused to survey the scene. The once-lorn, torn apart town is beginning its slow and steady rebuild: carts bringing crops from the nearby farms, markets beginning to bustle, and, most beloved of it all, two of the women they both love most in the world strolling down the path that takes them there. There had been talk of drink and further discussion, mostly from his Lordship himself, but Pike and Keyleth had broken off from their little party entirely and Vax doesn’t need two guesses to know where within Whitestone they’re heading. 

Jerked out of his reverie, Vax turns to the halfing- or, rather, looks down at her - but Kima shakes her head, braids bouncing on her shoulders and gestures roughly back towards the castle.

"No, not _me_ , " she snaps, like he's an idiot; when Vax turns his head once again, he sees why.

Gilmore is leaning against the stone wall near the gateway back inside, slightly tired and entirely handsome as the rest of his party pass him by. Percy gives him a nod and word, which Gilmore returns with an easy smile and word of his own; Grog gives him a slap on the shoulder which almost has Gilmore’s knees buckling, to Vax’s much-needed amusement. As in his bedroom, Vex places a gentle hand on Gilmore’s and, as in his bedroom, Vax remains unable to parse their conversation: Vex thanking Gilmore for looking after him, yes, and Gilmore waving it aside as no problem at all, but little more than that before she breaks away and follows Percy inside. Allura lingers the longest, and the lines in their postures grow serious and stern, talking together the way that mages.

Kima snorts. Vax can see her staring up at him out of the corner of his eye, an odd hostility in her eyes that he hasn't seen since the very first few minutes of their meeting.

When she doesn't stop glaring, Vax says, "I'm surprised I'm where your eyes are focused."

Unsurprisingly, he can barely blink before the halfing's maul is up in the air, so close to his chin he's sure it must have given him an impromptu shave. 

"I'm watching you," she says, before yanking her maul away, grinning when he stumbles slightly at its sudden absence, and storming away to join Allura. 

Vax rubs his chin, wondering what the hell that was all about as he follows her. Allura's head turns, a quiet smile blooming on her face the moment she spots Kima, and makes one last comment - and Gilmore laugh - before disappearing into the castle with the halfing by her side. 

"That was a big dog,” Gilmore says. 

He doesn’t push himself off the wall to meet him but everything he radiates pulls Vax in towards him: he halts just within arm’s reach of the man, far enough away to be decent, but not even nearly close enough. 

“Was it, now?”

“It was indeed,” Gilmore replies. His head is tilted a little to the side, watching him with steady eyes. It makes Vax feel a little vulnerable to see that very same affection as clear and unmistakable by stark daylight as by shrouded night. “You and Lady Kima looked like you were having a rather tense conversation. I hope you weren't talking about me."

“Just about how handsome you looked,” Vax says, stepping in until he’s almost crowding the man, wanting him, wishing him, as selfish as it may be, to wrap his arms around him like he had done only the night before. 

It’s selfish. When Gilmore’s eyes betray him, and flick to his mouth, he finds he's not sorry. 

“Oh, _really_ , now.”

“Something like that.” It wasn’t quite the truth, but that does not make it a falsehood: the thin winter light is reflecting off Gilmore’s cheekbones, his smile deepening the crow’s feet around his eyes, wiped clean of the kohl so often lining them, and he’s so handsome Vax thinks it might be blinding.

Gilmore waits until their noses are almost but not quite brushing to say, "If you think you’re going to kiss me with that mouth, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Vax takes a small step back, turning his head away to smile at - nothing. Anything. The grass. The sky. The stupid stone walls of the stupid stone castle that Percy calls his home. “I thought it was another _think_ coming.”

“I thought you were supposed to be in bed.” 

“I thought you were supposed to be getting me breakfast.”

“I did get you breakfast,” Gilmore says, radiant in all his bickering. He’s clothed once again in what he’d worn to dinner, no longer in the robe that Grog had lent him during the horrible events of what had passed in the night: Vax aches to curl his fingers in the soft fabric and tug them closer together. "Imagine my surprise when I came back to an empty bedroom after I had trekked all the way to the kitchens and back."

Vax opens his mouth to tease right back, something about how that must have been _so hard_ , until he remembers Gilmore’s voice in his ear, scraped hoarse with terror, and… doesn’t. “Sorry. I should’ve let you know, especially after last night."

"It's alright," Gilmore says idly. "Hanging out with the Lord of the castle, you're not exactly difficult to find."

"I should probably be concerned about that, considering my skill-set."

"You probably should,” he agrees. His posture is so loose and easy, leaning against that grand stone wall like it was nothing at all, but his hands are crossed behind his back. It seems strange to Vax that, only mere months ago, he would have been convinced by that: that he wouldn’t have noticed that no matter the affection in his smile Gilmore is holding himself back, that he is so, so still where he would normally be so animated. 

Vax wonders if his hands are as restless as his own. If they itch to reach for him, if he could count himself so lucky. 

"I’m glad you came down here,” he says. “I wanted to talk to you about something, actually.”

"Well, _that's_ never a good sign,” Gilmore says lightly, like it’s a joke, and it aches Vax’s heart to hear him so flippant when he knows the man feels anything but. 

"No, I wanted to say - I wanted to thank you. For last night.” He almost says it to his feet, a cowardly thing, but he drags his gaze back to Gilmore, the warm brown of his eyes. “I honestly don't know what I would’ve done without you."

Gilmore huffs a quiet laugh like that isn't what he expected him to say: like, whatever it was, he expects him to say it anyway, eventually. "Lain there and suffered, probably."

Vax smiles weakly. "Probably, yeah."

"There's no need to thank me," Gilmore says, softening into something a little more sincere. "You would've done the same for me. You _have_ done the same for me, in fact."

"I still want to thank you," Vax says. "I know you've said you've done it before but I've never… I've never had someone take care of me like that."

"A-ha,” Gilmore says, eyes widening in enigmatic alarm. “I _really_ hope you're just talking about you being ill - "

"What?” Vax says, before it hits him like a ton of very embarrassing bricks. “Oh, _oh_ \- "

"Because, my dear Vax'ildan, if last night was really the first time someone's _taken care of you_ like that - "

"Gods, no, _no_ \- "

Gilmore breaks out into a laugh, that bright boom that would have heads turning if there were any around them to turn. "I know, I know, I'm only teasing," he says, the bastard. "Well, if you're so insistent on thanking me, then you're very welcome. I'd say any time, but, well - " 

"No, I know," Vax says. He nods towards the entrance back into the castle, where he hopes none of his party are lingering around the corner, eavesdropping on every word they share. He wouldn’t put it past his sister. "We'll be heading down for drinks in a bit, would you like to join us? I'd really - I'd really like that."

Gilmore sighs deeply, his gaze following his to the entrance of the castle. "I myself would not be opposed but, from what Allura was saying…”

Shaking his head, he pushes himself off the wall, caught up in his own thoughts: Vax steps back like in a waltz, this strange push-pull of a dance he hasn’t quite learnt the steps to yet. “Let's just say that if the past, what, twenty-four hours haven't left me exhausted, then whatever she's got planned definitely will.”

Vax opens his mouth to say - something, he isn’t sure what, but Gilmore waves a hand. 

“Don’t worry about me,” he continues idly, neatening his clothes where they had gotten crumpled by the wall.  "Go join your party. Don't think I don't remember what it feels like to have won a battle."

That this sprucing up ensures his eyes do not meet his does not escape Vax’s notice. "Gilmore, when did you - "

"Another time," Gilmore cuts in. It's not dismissive, just - tired. On a closer look, Vax can't blame the man: it’s not just the winter sun that has left him looking wan and worn. He may not have been the one puking up his guts all night but he stayed awake with the one who was, and so Vax drops it. 

"Tonight, then, or tomorrow morning. We don't…” 

Vax gives in. He thinks he always will, twisting his fingers in the front of Gilmore’s robe, no different to how he'd clung to his robes barely an hour before: a plea for him to stay when he knows he has to leave. “We don't have much time left together, I don't think."

"You are much too despondent, you are,” Gilmore replies, still able to tease not matter how tired he is. His hand lands on Vax’s: once again, untangling his fingers from his robe and entwining theirs together. “Tonight, then, my dear. Or tomorrow morning. We'll see how things go."

Vax glances down at their intertwined fingers, the sunlight shimmering on Gilmore’s rings. "Thank you, Shaun, I - "

"Stop it," Gilmore warns. "Go have fun with your friends. I'll see you before you know it."

Vax presses their foreheads together: he can feel Gilmore’s intake of breath through his skin, in his lungs. He feels him give in, too: the hand not holding his grasping the back of Vax’s neck, keeping him here, keeping him close. It's a little awkward, gripping each other like this so out in the open, but it’s no more erroneous than their embrace in the early hours of the morning, and more than a little good, settling the ache in his heart.

“I really am a very lucky idiot,” he tells him. “The luckiest I know.”

“Oh, darling,” Gilmore murmurs, but nothing more than that. 

When their breath becomes one, Vax cracks open an eye and says, "Hey, Gilmore?"

"Mm?" he drawls. He doesn't even open his eyes, the lazybones. "You can call me Shaun, you know, I don't mind."

"Maybe tonight I could take care of you, instead."

“ _What?_ " 

When Gilmore’s eyes fly right open so satisfyingly in shock, Vax smacks a stinging kiss on his handsome, _handsome_ face before he can protest any further and leaps away, leaving the man spluttering with laughter in his wake. 

“See you later, Gilmore!” he calls over his shoulder as he bounds back towards the castle gate, grinning fit to burst. Gods, he's so glad he's alive. He and Shaun and all the rest. Even the conversations that loom in his future like heavy rain clouds as fit to burst as his smile are not enough to temper it. 

Gilmore sends him on his way with a smack on the ass that has his own laugh echoing around the courtyard. “Until later, you scoundrel."

***

“Vax!" Keyleth calls from across the crowded tavern, relaxed and confident and bubbly in a way she so rarely is when sober, and Vax knows he will never grow tired of the sound. "Come sit by me!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Vax says, as his sister hoots from the sky, “or _say nothing_."

Vex just laughs as she swoops away, soaring above their heads. The chaos has died down now, enough for Keyleth to have collapsed into a seat, waving away the sparks on her fingers as she waves him over. For what may be the first time in his life, Vax wishes that Percy were putting the charms on his sister: anything to stop her from sending any more pointed looks his way. He’s dimly aware of the man taking his recently-vacated place by Pike’s side as he winds his way through the crowded tavern over to Keyleth. They’re just far enough away that over the noise of the tavern they can talk quietly without too much fear of being overheard by the rest of their party. He wonders if it’s on purpose. As he takes a seat, and finds himself unable to catch a single word that Percy and Pike are saying, he finds himself glad that it is.

There’s a beat of hesitation, long enough for Vax to start feeling a bit trapped in the close, warm space of the crowded tavern, to start feeling like this was a huge mistake no matter how inevitable it is: that he should call Vex down from her flight, that he should’ve dragged Scanlan over with him as well, that -

Then Keyleth smiles at him, and all his worries seem to blow away. 

Then Keyleth says, “So, you and Gilmore, huh?” and all those worries hit him like a hurricane. 

“Me and Gilmore,” he agrees quietly because he knows there’s no universe in which he wouldn’t speak to her, but no one ever said that there’d be a universe where it’d be easy, too. 

Keyleth tilts her head to the side, watching him with drunk-bright eyes, her skin flushed in the candlelight. “You’re smiling.”

“I am?”

“Yeah.”

Vax has the sudden, inexplicable urge to curl up under the table, or to vault up into the shadows in the ceiling and disappear - to walk away from this conversation as he has walked away from so much else - but he doesn’t. He can’t. Instead, he shrugs, trying to loosen the tension tightening his shoulders as much as anything else, and says, “Guess I’ve got a lot to smile about.”

It takes a second for him to realise that that’s the truth, his own face warm not just from the heat of the tavern. Sure, he’s a little drunk - drunk on booze, not enough food, and the mere mention of their names together - but, gods, there is just so much to smile about. That he’s alive, for starters. That he’s rid of whatever the hell was twisting his stomach into knots. That his sister is still alive, that she’s happily trading barbs with Scanlan, that she’s zooming through the air with her new hat sitting jauntily on her head, her laughter as light and as free as her flight. That Percy brought her the broom to begin with. Gods, Vax even wants to smile at the look on the ponce’s face: the look like he didn’t want to be away from her for all that time but every second apart was worth it to see the smile on her face. 

He is smiling because of Keyleth, as blithe as she is beautiful, chucking a chicken into the air. He is smiling because of his sister making kebabs from it with one sure shot of her arrow. He is smiling because they are alive, every single one of them; because he gets to sit and watch and savour the sight of them, the sounds of their levity, despite everything - and because of him. Gorgeous, glorious him. He can admit that much to himself. 

Like she’s reading his mind, Keyleth says, “Will he, um - ” 

She ducks her head, her long hair falling to hide her face, and Vax finds himself rearing back in a sudden, instinctive horror, her tentative smile growing splintering teeth, her fingers knife-edged talons - 

“Are you alright?” 

Her voice, startled and alarmed and nothing like the mockery of the previous night, wrenches him out of it: panic pollutes his lungs, his hand having leapt to his dagger and his heart into his throat in the half a second it took for her to look back up at him again. Her eyes are now wide with worry, on the knife edge between sobering up, and staying drunk and panicking anyway. He cannot - it cannot - how close had it gotten? How deep under her skin had the hell-beast gotten that even the ghost of it's depravity can scare the living shit out of him?

“Last night, you - " the words trip over each other, heart trip-hammering in his chest, still struggling to catch his breath. "Well, it wasn’t you, but - the rakshasa, it did a very similar thing.”

Keyleth’s hand lingers at her hairline, long fingers pale against a strand of her red hair, before she smiles again, a little weakly, and pushes it behind her pointed ears. “I guess I do do that a lot, huh.”

The air settles, the danger passed, and yet his lungs still feel crushed under the weight of his aching heart, struggling to breathe.

“You shouldn’t,” he tells her, voice thick with all the things he isn’t sure he will ever know how to say. “You shouldn’t ever have to hide your smile. It’s a lovely smile, it really is.”

“Thank you, I, uh,” Keyleth says, wrestling with the words as much as he is, struggling to not hide herself from the world once again. “Will he be joining us tonight?”

“I don’t think so,” Vax says. His heart is beating loud in his chest, an unstoppable thing, so loud that surely the whole tavern must hear it. He is smiling because of him. He knows that now. But it sits heavy in his stomach to know that she might be smiling in spite of him. That he once did everything he could to get a smile out of her, and now it takes several empty mugs on the table before she can even say a word to him. “Allura’s put him on protecting-the-city duty with her, so.”

“That’s a shame,” Keyleth replies, with the air of someone striking bravely out into the unknown. “You see each other so infrequently, I’m sure you want to make the most of it.”

Gods, she’s trying so hard to play it cool, to play it light, when the truth is that she shouldn’t need to be, when they both know she shouldn't be. Only by his hand, by his cruelty, only because she is a better friend that he will ever be is she doing this. He looks down at the mug still full to the brim in his hands, jaw heavy with shame.  She is trying so, so hard for him. What else can he do but be truthful? If he’s not ready now, he never will be, and he wants to be. Gods, he wants to be. 

Softly, he says, “I have not been good to you, Keyleth.”

Her face creases. “Vax - ”

“Not before - not before Whitestone,” he adds, like it matters, like it could excuse any of this at all.

“Does it matter if it was before Whitestone?” she fires back, because she knows it as much as he does: that the moment he crept into Shaun Gilmore’s bed was the moment that he should have fallen to his knees before her and begged for forgiveness. “Sorry, that was - petty.”

“No, no -”

The corner of her mouth quirks up like it always does when she’s making fun of herself, that wry smile Vax rarely sees and so fondly loves. “It was a little.”

“Okay, maybe it was,” Vax agrees with a soft smile of his own. “But I think you’re allowed to be.”

“Yes but that’s not why I wanted to talk to you,” she says in one great, big rush of air, like she couldn’t wait to say it, like it would've killed her to have kept it in her lungs for a moment longer. It catches Vax off-guard for a second, that quick change in temperance, before he remembers just how bright with drink her eyes are and guilt churns within him once again. “That's not why I want to talk to anyone! Everyone keeps on taking me aside and trying to talk to me like I’m gonna fall apart over it any second as if far worse things haven’t happened to us over the past few months, as if my _family_ \- and I wanted to talk to you because I want to try and _fix_ things, not be petty at you - _gods_." She digs her hands into her hair, already pale fingers turning white with frustration. “Why are we so bad at talking to each other?”

“I don’t know!” Vax laughs, more out of anxiety than anything else. He can’t help it. He thinks if he wasn’t laughing at how ludicrous this all was he’d be having a nervous breakdown. “I have absolutely no idea!”

“ _And_ cause I wanted to know why you went with me last night, _and_ \- ”

“What do you mean, why did I follow you?” Vax splutters. “Kiki - ”

“Because it was so late! And, I don’t know, unexpected for me to show up at that time, and you had, y’know,” she swallows, her pupils wide and looking at everything but him, “ _other_ commitments - ”

“Because you wanted to talk to me,” Vax says, “and because you are my friend.” 

It surprises him, the question - not so much the question, exactly, but her need to question, the hesitance that must have evoked it. Keyleth’s staring at him with eyes red-rimmed not only from drink but something much worse, her mouth slightly open and trembling. Now that Vax’s not wrapped up in his own stupid, selfish shit, he can see that it’s the same way she’s been staring at him for weeks: confused, sure, but more doubtful than anything else, and it breaks his heart to realise that he was the one who planted it there. Her doubt, it breaks his heart.

“You - the rakshasa, it not only disguised itself as you, it also spoke as you,” he continues: and, for his sins, she lets him. “It was an abomination of what you’d say, as much as it was an abomination of how you look, but - it knew about the Sun Tree, and what’s happened since then, and what - hasn’t. So if you say we’re bad at talking to each other it’s because I’ve been bad to you. I know with all that’s happened that I’ve pushed you away - all of you, but you most of all, because I’ve been ashamed. I don’t want to be bold enough to say that I know I’ve caused you pain, but I cannot pretend to be blind to that fact that I haven’t been treating you fairly.”

“Are you more afraid that I’ve been hurt by what has happened, or - hasn’t happened,” Keyleth says, voice steady with that awful, deep-seated grief. “Or are you more afraid that I haven’t been?”

“I don’t know,” Vax says, words catching in his throat. “I don’t know."

There’s silence, then. The world around them still moves madly on, the tavern as bustling as it had been the moment Vax sat down, but he sees it all like through blurred glass, foggy with whatever it is between them they’re burying now. 

Keyleth tilts her head back, blinking up at the candles burning in the chandelier that Vex has almost flown right into a couple times, the wrought iron sent swinging precariously as she passes. “I can’t exactly say it’s come as a shock.”

“Why? After the Sun Tree, after - " Vax starts, and stops. He knows why. She told him, under those dappled leaves all those weeks ago.

“Because I couldn’t shake the thought that every time I look at you it’s going to be the last,” Keyleth whispers. They don’t surprise her, her words, but like they’ve - settled inside her, maybe. Like she’s just realised she’s been looking at him for years. Like she’s looking at him for the very first time. “I still can’t. I told you - under the Sun Tree, I told you that I think you deserve better than that, than someone who was too terrified to even talk to you. I think you knew that, no matter what you said.”

"I wasn’t lying," Vax says, just as quiet, just as sorry, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t know why he’s doing it, truths spilling from his tongue before he can stop them, this cruelty of which he is finally capable. "I was telling the truth. Kiki, I would've - for a thousand years, I would've - ”

"Don't," Keyleth says, all warning behind the warmth. "Just - don't. I - one day, I’ll respect myself enough to not let you finish that sentence. Until then, I respect Gilmore too much to let you finish that sentence. Vax, I - I was scared of a future that was yet to be written and he wrote the prologue before I could even pick up the quill, or open the first page or… I don’t know whether this is going. Mostly I’m just happy you’re still alive. _Gods_ , we have so few happinesses in this life. I can't resent you for taking it where you can."

"He does make me happy," Vax says, because there’s nothing else to say, because there's nothing he can say to deny it. "More than I know how to cope with, sometimes."

“He was never scared of feeling anything deeper than he already did,” Keyleth says. “Don’t be afraid of that, just ‘cause I was.” 

Silence blooms out between them again, listening to the hubbub of the tavern outside their bubble of companionable quiet, their sanctuary: Vex still lording over them from her new eminence, Scanlan flirting with every barlad or maid who sauntered past, Pike still chatting quietly with Percy. If Vax were a more perceptive half-elf, he would see that Percy's eyes kept darting up to the ceiling and who had made residence there but Pike kept on looking at him, like she'd been looking at him for years - that is to say, if Vax were a more perceptive half-elf, he would see that she loves him, too. For now, all he can see is friends, all he can see is laughter: all he can see is the chasm between him and Keyleth that he tore apart by his own hand slowly beginning to heal. 

Softly, when the silence has stretched on for much too long, Vax asks, “Will you ever forgive me?” 

"I trust you with my life, Vax,” Keyleth says, like it’s obvious, like it’s laughable that he could ever call it into question. "None of this changes that. But I might be a bit hesitant with trusting you with my heart." 

"Any man would be lucky to have you," Vax tells her. This, at least, he knows how to say. "Man, woman, whatever. Anyone. Anyone."

"I can't - I don't - I don't think so," Keyleth says, breaking into that sweet, awkward smile he fell in love with all those moons ago. She’s reddened even more, the bridge of her nose so pink that the freckles have disappeared, but at least she doesn’t try and hide it from him. "He's lucky to have you."

Now it’s Vax’s turn to grin and duck his head, although his hair doesn’t fall even nearly as effortless or as elegant as hers. 

“I'm lucky he still wants me, all this time I've been gone - and that he's still alive. Gods above, he looked like he was about to keel over when Pike sent that bastard back from whence he came."

"I dread to think what might've happened if he wasn't in the castle," Keyleth says, taking a drink from her glass for the first time Vax sat down by her side. It seems to break something: that fragile trembling in the air in which any words could’ve been spoken, and anything could have happened. They’re floating back towards calmer waters, as much as their pasts can allow, as much as they’re willing to work for it, and he’s so grateful he doubts there are words for it in any language.

"Nah, he would've been fine," Vax says, instead. "Would've been more worried about the state of his place. _Gods_ , you should've seen it, Kiki - "

She jerks away from her mug so quickly it leaves a frothy moustache on her upper lip, perking up at the mere implication of a scrap. “Oh, yeah, I heard Percy complaining about your room earlier, what happened?"

"I'm not actually sure,” Vax admits. “I didn't see it, bit too busy getting my guts ripped out - he said it was a bit like Bigby's hand, I think? The thing Scanlan does? But somehow he’d used it to squeeze a whole person into, just, a ball of pulp, like a really gory peach, until it exploded  - " 

Keyleth reels back, face contorting in laughter and disgust alike as Vax mimes out what he thinks might’ve happened whilst he was otherwise occupied. "Oh, gods, did it get all over the walls?"

"Over the walls, over the floors, over the bed - like, those sheets are _ruined_ ," Vax says, and does his best not to wince at the implications. "No amount of magic is fixing those." 

"Awesome," Keyleth says, her voice filled with wonder, "Hey, hey, hey," then excitement, "Can I tell you what I did with mine?"

Vax shifts to get a bit more comfortable in his seat, his pint still satisfyingly full in his hands. "Please do, please do!"

"Okay, so, I was asleep, right - "

And when Vax relaxes back to listen to her tale, it does not seem weird to listen close and laugh hard; and when Vax thumps the table with laughter as she describes the man toppling out the window, it does not seem weird that she's beaming with pride at having made him laugh; and when a brawl breaks out and the air is alive with the sounds of yelling and fighting and he catches her eye from across the tavern, it does not seem weird to grin back at her, fierce and happy. 

He does not see Gilmore that evening, only receives a note delivered by a young lad saying that he’s unable to get away from his duties, but when he collapses into a freshly-made bed that night he curls up around the rented fancy robe he left neatly hung on  on the dresser, sleeping easy surrounded by his sweet smell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently preludes are no longer a thing with this fic but, who knows, they may come back in future chapters.
> 
> Thank you for reading. Update due by mid-Feb, I hope, and comments are always lovely :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E58 Part 5 of 5.

“It’s a lovely view from here.”

“It’s a lovely view from  _ here _ ," Gimore says. The weight of his stare is hot on the small of his back, bare but for the scars and the hand-print seared into his skin: Vax more than happily obliges, stretching out like a cat in the sunshine, enjoying the renewed looseness in his muscles until he adds, “I’m sure whoever’s on the grounds is enjoying it as just as much.”

Vax drops his arms. “There’s no one on the grounds," he says, resting his hands on the windowsill until all that could be seen was his pale shoulders, and what little of his chest was not obscured by a curtain of hair. It wasn't as if there was a soul in sight who could catch a peep - it wasn't as if half the castle hadn’t caught much more than a peep the previous night, of the both of them and more besides - but it didn’t harm him to have some sense of propriety and, besides, if Keyleth - 

_ No. Stop it _ . _ Remember what you said? _

Shaking himself out of it, Vax focuses his eyes back on the view, on the force of the ocean crashing against the cliffs instead of the force of her eyes on him that now only exists in his mind. When he had first halted by the window, it had been to crack it open and let in some air, and out the odour, only to be captivated by the sight of the sun shining on the forests of Whitestone, the sea rippling in the winter wind. There was no doubt that Percy favoured the view of the room they'd shared the night before: that scene had stretched all the way down to the city, the smoke billowing from the fires of the townsfolk who began their days far earlier than they had. But this room has not the remains of their attempted murderers staining the stone floors, nor the ghost of a past love lingering by the door; this room has Gilmore in his bed, and a window due east over quiet land and roaring ocean, one just waking and the other never-sleeping. and thick blankets to keep them warm, so Vax for one has no complaints.

There are so many things he knows he will never experience again once all this is done. A crisp sea breeze on skin warmed from heat and contact is not something he will pass easily on. Not when their twenty-seventh birthday could have been their last together, not when every time Keyleth sees his face she fears it may be the last, not when he never knew that that parting kiss from his mother would be the last until his tears smudged the ink that told him so - and again, and again, and again, he is overcome by that endless, relentless grief, gripping onto the edge of the windowsill like it's the only thing keeping him upright. He does not let go. He does not chance it being otherwise, expecting Gilmore to say something,  _ anything _ to shatter the silence, burning hot with pathetic relief and worse anger when he doesn’t. All he can hear is the roar of the ocean and his hitching, harrowed breaths, not a sound from the man in his bed but his own, sleep-slow breathing. That cuts through it, more than the whistling of the wind, and Vax shakes his head, as sick and tired of his bullshit as his sister is. 

Every act of selfishness he has been weak enough to commit, every selfish thought he has let run through his head, and yet he still expects Gilmore to leap to comfort and console him when he’s sleeping soundly in his bed. Oh, he knows who he’s angry at. He knows who planted the seed of the deep-seated fury in his heart, who caused that parting kiss to be the last, who saved their lives as much as he gave them it, and all he’s got to do his open his mouth and fucking  _ talk  _ about it.

He did it last night. If he can do that, he can do anything. 

Shallow breath by shallow breath, deep breath by deeper breath, Vax grips the windowsill until he's surprised it doesn’t shatter beneath his fingers and he's finally able to say it. Even if Gilmore has fallen asleep on him, he still at least would’ve spoken the words into existence. 

“We're going to the Feywild today,” he says. “We might - ”

“Oh, gods,” Gilmore cuts in, his groan immediate, loud, and ever-indulgent, not to mention startling a much-needed laugh out of Vax’s choked-up chest, gods bless the man. “Do we have to talk about that  _ now _ ?"

Vax doesn’t need to turn around to see the amused umbrage on the man’s face. Gods, he's no better than Keyleth, is he? No better than Pike or Scanlan or his sister or any of them, fumbling through all these pesky emotions, he cannot help but laugh at it, and so he does. His breath fogs up the glass like dragon's breath to the point where he could probably draw a smiley face in the condensation. All that stress and distemper twisting his shoulders into knots at the window, and all the while Gilmore had probably been dozing with his eyes closed, considering his silence as little more than appreciating the view. 

“Okay, maybe not my best timing - ”

“Not your best timing, no. Be - ” Gilmore cuts himself off with a loud yawn. Vax can see, out of the corner of his eye, him pulling the sheets up over his mouth to catch it. “Begun getting the urge to - conk out right after. Not quite as young as I used to be."

"You're not all that old.” 

"I said I wasn't as young as I used to be, not that I'm  _ all _ that old,” Gilmore says, pulling the blankets back down. “I certainly feel old compared to you lot. What you’re doing with an old man like me I’ll never know.”

If there’s anything, Vax thinks idly as he draws a smiley face into the condensation on the window, that he will regret at the end of all things, it'll be that; everything he did to let that doubt creep into the voices of everyone who loves him: the doubt that he loves them back, as much as they deserve.

“You could at least come back to bed,” Gilmore continues, blissfully unaware of the stroke of breakdown-induced artistic inspiration Vax is having at the window. “It’s absolutely freezing with that window open.”

Vax smiles back at the little face he made before turning back to the bed. “Not much colder than Emon."

"You say that like Emon wasn't too cold at the best of times." 

He was right, Gilmore had his eyes closed, and the thick blankets freshly magiqued clean by a wave of his hand tucked up to his chin. Now, though, they blink slowly open, like he cannot bear to look at what his mind has conjured up behind his lids. They do not settle upon him. Whatever it is Gilmore is looking at, it is not on this plane of existence. 

" _ Isn't _ too cold," he continues. "I never - I never know if I should refer to it in the present tense or not.”

The reminder sends more of a chill through him than the wind of Whitestone ever could. 

“Neither do I.”

Gilmore's arms leave the blankets only long enough to pull Vax into them as he crawls under the covers, grumbling when he presses against his sleep-warm skin. Vax makes the most of it, running his winter-chilled hands over as much bare skin as he can reach until Gilmore is threatening to kick him out of bed even as his arms wrap solid and heavy around him. From the height of the sun in the sky, it was getting quite late into the morning, and probably about time for them to both be getting a move on and acknowledging that there were still three dragons tearing up the Tal’Dorei countryside as they speak. On the one hand, there’s no doubt that the rest of the party collapsed into bed at a similar hour as he had. On the other, he doubts that any of them have begun their days like he has: being woken by Gilmore at their door and pulling him into bed, eager to be taking care of him this time. 

Luckily, the cooked breakfast and the steaming hot mugs of coffee that Gilmore had brought up with him from the Whitestone kitchens had been just as good lukewarm when they had finally gotten around to them. As late as it is, Vax is in no hurry to leave this bed. No hurry be sent pointed looks from Vex, no hurry to be sent even more pointed quips from Scanlan, no hurry to - to do anything but this, drifting in and out of wakefulness by his side.

"You can sleep," Vax says when Gilmore, erring on the side of sleep, apologises for yawning for the second time.

“Oh, gods - ”

 "I won't mind - ”

“ _ Vax’ildan _ \- ”

“It’s probably because of the work you've been doing maintaining the barrier,” Vax presses as Gilmore draws out his name, drowsy and devoted. “Instead of - "

"You wearing me out?"

Vax laughs softly. "Something like that."

Gilmore hums, a quiet, satisfied noise that Vax can feel vibrating in his chest, warming him up as much as his body heat has. "Mm, if only that were true. So, the Feywild, hm? Remind me, which one of your fancy toys will you be fetching this time?”

“A bow supposedly lost there during the Calamity,” Vax replies, graciously accepting the diversion. Gods know Gilmore has done it for him enough times. “Fenthras, I believe it's called.”

“Well, that’s clearly for Scanlan,” Gilmore says. He’s drawing something on Vax’s upper arm with his middle finger. “For how long do you think you'll be gone?”

It takes a second for Vax to realise that he’s tracing over the line of his bicep. "I don't know. A week, maybe, two, and that’s if the planes play nice - ”

"No guarantee of that, that's for sure - ”

"And there's always a chance that - "

"You might not come back,” Gilmore cuts in, as Vax knew he always would. “And there's always a chance that you return only to find Whitestone torn asunder by multiple dragons and me amongst the ruins. Gods, you could return to find me dead of a heart attack and you'd be helpless to change it."

"Shaun - "

He’s cut off once again by Gilmore pulling him onto his side until their knees are knocking together and Gilmore’s cradling his face in the palm of his hand, thumb gently stroking his cheek, the corner of his lip. 

"I want you to be  _ excited _ . I know I was. I want you to go and have fun and explore and make me feel terribly jealous - ”

“I doubt anybody will be flirting with me in the Feywild.” Stupid, selfish, stupid,  _ selfish  _ -

"They'd be fools if they weren't, I mean - ” Gilmore’s gaze flicks down, over his thin, scarred chest. “And I pray for your sake that they are."

"Why?” Vax asks, and Gilmore’s gaze flicks back to his face, tracing his eyes, the bridge of his nose, like he’s committing them to memory. “Will I be in trouble if I flirt back?"

"With them, definitely,” Gilmore quips, before his voice settles into something softer, bittersweet. “What I don't want you is for you to go and spend the entire time moping over me."

And he hates it, Vax does, that bittersweet voice, so deeply entrenched in the grief that should not exist in his heart and in their bed, and so he nudges Gilmore’s knee with his own, and says, "Are you saying that you're not going to mope over me?"

"Oh, absolutely not. I'm going to drape myself over all the couches and balconies in Whitestone lamenting that my love is gone."

Vax huffs a laugh at the image that conjures: Gilmore in long, flowing purple robes, lamenting over the moon as did the rose-lipped maidens and light-footed lads in the stories he and his sister read when they were children together. "I'm not sure what Cassandra will have to say about that." 

"I’m amongst those protecting her city,” Gilmore replies in a tone so overly pompous it has to be on purpose. “So I'm afraid  _ Lady _ Cassandra will just have to put up with it." 

"It's encouraging to know you spend your time while I'm away in such a productive fashion,” Vax says, rolling onto his back. He covers it with another stretch until a twinge from the healing skin on his stomach warns him otherwise, but he does not try to trick himself that that’s the reason.

He knows it’ll be easier to say if he isn’t looking at the man. So much, it turns out, is.

 “We might - we might be seeing our father.”

“Ah,” Gilmore says, and then rolls onto his back as well, as detached as the tone of his voice. 

When Vax turns his head to look at him, because it turns out that that whole spiel about not looking making it easier was a crock of shite, his expression is just as carefully blank, his calm stare is fixed on the ceiling, the jagged cracks in the stone, and Vax’s stare could not feel less calm.

“Have I told you about him already?”

“You have told me very little - which, when it comes to you, I’ve learned means a lot.”

Suddenly, Vax finds himself as fascinated by the cracks in the ceiling as Gilmore is. 

“Why only might?” 

“He wasn’t the kindest to us, growing up,” he admits to the ceiling. “Bit of a dick, really.  _ Lot _ of a dick, actually. I’d like to say he did his best but not even that is true, nor would I like to say it. It always seemed like we were - an inconvenience to have around. But, unless you know of anyone who might be able to locate a cancerous tree in the middle of a bunch of other trees for us - ”

“Then it's time to pay your old man a visit,” Gilmore finishes on a sigh. “My connections don’t spread as far as other planes of existence, I’m afraid. Have to say, it’s only recently I’ve started wishing they did. However, if you  _ do _ happen to frequent Syngorn, and they’re in need of a magic shop, please, feel free.”

Vax snorts. “I knew you were only with me for the business opportunities.”

“Of course, why else?” Gilmore drawls. “That, and the very comfortable beds.” 

His head turns back to face, that twinkle in his eye blinking out at whatever he reads on Vax’s face, replaced with a sweet confusion that Vax cannot help but smile at. “What?”

“There are some who would question my motivations for going and seeing my father.”

“Hey, it’s not as if I’m the most dutiful son in that regard. I haven’t seen my parents in years,” Gilmore scoffs. “Would you be seeing your sister if you visited him?”

His smile grows. “Yes.”

“Well, there we go, then,” Gilmore says, as if that was that and they need not speak of it, nor he need justify himself.  “I’m not surprised. You deserved better than that. It’s a horrible way to grow up.”

Vax thinks about it - saying more, talking about his sister, how they could never resent her for being pure-blooded when they were not, for being welcomed in a society when they were not, for being loved when they were not - but he already knows this. Without Vax having to say a word, Gilmore knows all this, and more, and all speaking into existence will do is open up the jagged scars on his soul that would be wrenched open the second he steps into Syngorn. Enough wounds have been opened these past few days, why open anymore? 

Instead, rolling back onto his side, Vax asks, “What was it like when you went?”

“Like how it is all the time, I expect.”

“I thought - ”

“I have,” Gilmore says. “And I haven’t.”

Vax is split-seconds from spluttering about what the hell that means until he sees the sudden stillness in Gilmore’s face, that same otherworldly fixation in his eyes. He wonders that he’d never seen it before, that stillness that silences him more than words could. As he watches the memories form in Gilmore’s mind, his eyes settling once again on that which laid not in this plane, he wonders how he had never seen it before, all these nights they’ve laid side by side. 

He takes a very long time to continue. The patience that this man has had with him, and the games he has played with his heart: Vax can wait for as long as it takes. He deserves no less. He deserves so, so much more.

“I was very young, not much older than Keyleth. There was another druid within our party - not quite as adept as her at shape-changing, but he was quite the wizard with spores - he sent us there. We were there for almost a month and I don’t remember a second. Not a single one. All I learned, all I experienced - all gone.” 

The words form strangely in his mouth, sound strange to Vax’s ears. For all that he has tried to tell Gilmore everything, rarely does he manage these days to tell the man the whole truth: because he doesn’t want to be cruel to him. Because he doesn’t want to be cruel to himself. Because he cannot admit to Gilmore what he has not yet been able to admit to himself. It’s something that Vax knows well. He had just never considered that Gilmore might know it, too. 

“Why haven’t you gone back?”

“Oh, many reasons,”  Gilmore replies, far more flippant than Vax knows lies under the surface. “Too many to recall. We discussed it, in the few months after, but… the memory loss bothered me more than I should’ve let it and, by the time I’d gotten over myself… let’s just say the option was no longer there.”

Gilmore’s hair is still in the lazy ponytail he’d tied up in a hurry as he tried to close the door, deposit the breakfast tray, and grab Vax’s arse at the same time. Vax reaches out to gently pull at the ribbon until his hair is loose and falling over his bare shoulders once again, carding his fingers through it until Gilmore is humming, satisfied and quiet, eyes fluttering closed. 

"Maybe we can go there sometime,” Vax says, once the worry lines have faded from his forehead. “You and I."

"What, if we survive this?" Gilmore says dryly, arching into his touch. "You know, that could be rather nice."

Vax stills his hands: Gilmore makes a little mue of disappointment, pushing his head into his hands until he says, “Come with us.”

"What?"

"No, I'm serious. We could use someone of your skillset. You reduced a man to a  _ pulp _ , Shaun," he adds when Gilmore begins to feebly protest. “You can't be downplaying your abilities now."

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” Gilmore says, a little uneasy. His left hand moves to rest on the curve of Vax’s hip, running his thumb over an old scar from years gone by. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a tempting offer, but I'm more needed here." 

"Maybe we don't need you,” Vax says, “but what if I do?"

He hears the falsehood before the words leave his mouth. Need, that flimsy, flexible thing. He needs food. He needs water. He needs air, he needs his sister and her heart warm, alive, and beating. Without air, he will die in three minutes: without water he will die in three days: without food, he will die in three weeks. Thirty years he has almost lived, and thirty years he will likely never reach. But does he need this? He wants. Gods, he wants. He’s allowed himself so many selfishnesses: has almost broken friendships and hearts over it. This is a selfishness he does not need. 

It must bleed into his voice, because Gilmore says, “You don't need me,” his voice soft in its scorn. “I'd much prefer you want me than need me." 

His dark eyes are warm and understanding in the late morning light. Vax presses his forehead against his, breathing in his scent. "Then I'll just have to be comforted by the knowledge that you're doing the right thing."

"Guess we both will."

"It's a bit shit, really."

Gilmore laughs at that, as he hoped he would: a short, quick punch of a sound. "Oh, absolutely  _ awful _ . But, hey, perhaps it might give your sister and young Percival a shove in the right direction. It's a wonderful place to fall in love, or so I’ve been told.”

Vax’s hand travels across the expanse of Gilmore’s hip. His eyebrows raise until they hit his hairline before Vax’s fingers find the raised scar on his back, mapping the shape of the strike. Gently, pushing the covers down to their waists, he pulls Gilmore onto his front, shivering at the chill without complaint. 

“It’s looking better,” he says, gently tracing the gash, the skin still very pink compared to the brown of his back. “Pike did very well.”

“Maybe she can help again,” Gilmore replies softly, face turned so he can look up at Vax through love-lidded eyes. It's too much, sometimes, that gaze. Sometimes he understands why she turned tail and fled, why she still trembles across the table. “See if she can Send a message every so often, when she can spare the spell.”

Vax cannot help it, he cannot bear to be so far away from such a gaze, and he curls back down next to him, close enough to go cross-eyed with want. "Can you learn it?"

"I'm afraid not,” Gilmore says. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

"So I won't be able to hear your voice.”

“No,” Gilmore begins, and Vax thinks he’s about to use some cheesy pick-up line when he - stops. He stops, and sighs, and says, “We should probably get moving before your sister storms in asking what I’ve done with her brother.”

Vax watches him withdraw, with a wince at the chill but without a complaint, from the sheets. “She would never.”

“Oh, she would,” Gilmore replies, leaning down to collect his robes from where they had been hastily discarded upon his arrival. Vax can hear him grumbling about the creases and crumples in the fabric, how good-natured the complaining is. He wonders if that is due to his upbringing, as much as Vex's temper was due to theirs. 

_ Vex.  _

He wonders, as he stares half at the breadth of Gilmore's back, half at the memory of his sister that still lingers, perched at the edge of the bed, if she had heard any of their conversation last night: if she approved. After yesterday, he’d half-expected her to storm in during the early hours of today to make her views very well known.

He wonders if Gilmore was right, as he so often is, and the Feywild will give her and hers a shove in the right direction. It's been a long time coming, that's for sure.

He wonders, more importantly, if she's awake yet. 

“Hey,” Vax asks as Gilmore pulls his robe on over his head. “If I ask nicely, do you think the kitchens would make me lentil soup?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally finished E58. Only took eight months and half the fic!
> 
> Thanks for reading. Update due late March.


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